Do you ever get the feeling you are behind on life? That by now, surely, you should have accomplished x, y, & z or been here, done that, had this experience, and so on. That life is not something to enjoy but some sort of race, and the ones who are winning are the ones who have more than us or have done more than us.

Well, I have some news for you. There is no formula to life. There are no deadlines, no winners, and no losers. We don't spin a dial and let chance decide when we go to college, where we work, when we get married, if we get married, when we have kids, if we have kids, and so on. Everyone is on their own timetable, and they don't even know what it is! That's the beauty of life - we get to experience things as we go, enjoy things while they last, and look forward to what's to come.

It can be frustrating. It can be hard to look around you and see what other people have and wonder when you will get to experience those same joys - if you'll get to experience those same moments. But it's in these periods of waiting, through our patience and our faith, that we are able to grow. We wait, we pray, we hope, and keep our faith, and then when we least expect it, whatever it is we are hoping for comes into our lives and it couldn't be better.

And not every part of life is great. Some of the things we hoped for with all our might will fall through, people we loved will leave us, and we will fall short of our goals. There will be pages of our lives that will leave us crying for days and make our hearts break one thousand times over. But for all the hard times, there will be good times - pages that you will want to reread over and over, chapters that you don't want to end. And these are the moments we have to remember are coming; that we are stronger than our hardships and heartbreaks and there is light at the end of the tunnel. We need the bad parts so we can recognize the good parts. We can't read ahead to make sure everything will work out; instead, we need to have faith that everything is as it should be, and trust the timing of our lives.

You will get the degree. You will get the job. You will fall in love. You will accomplish your goals. Appreciate where you are today, and have faith in what will be.