Cocoonery

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

  to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

  unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of progress

  that it it made by passing through

  some stages of instability - 

  and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

  your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,

  let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,

  as though you could be today what time

  (that is to say, grace and circumstances

  acting on your own good will)

  will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit 

  gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

  that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

  in suspense and incomplete.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

(quoted in Nancy Bieber, Decision Making & Spiritual Discernment)

image by me