Aging Wine

Do you ever feel like the aging wine in a bottle? You've got a definite purpose (someone's going to buy you someday and drink you right up if you're the wine). You've gone through a lot of change from the time you were a bunch of grapes on the vine. But you find yourself just sitting around, day after day, week after week, month after month wondering when you're going to be ready.  Ready to breathe, ready for your purpose, ready to bring enjoyment to someone. How long is the waiting and slow transformation to a good old wine going to take?

Recently I was perusing Wikipedia for some insight into the process of aging wine and I came across this paragraph:

Dumb phase
During the course of aging a wine may slip into a "dumb phase" where its aromas and flavors are very muted. In Bordeaux this phase is called the age ingrat or "difficult age" and is likened to a teenager going through adolescence. The cause or length of time that this "dumb phase" will last is not yet fully understood and seems to vary from bottle to bottle

Well, of late I have felt very much as if I must be in the "dumb phase" myself.  I am enjoying most of the daily routines of life as a wife and mother, but the aromas and flavors of life seem muted. I feel as if I, like the adolescent mentioned above, am struggling for independence, for change, for growth but that it isn't happening, at least not that I can see.

I've been in this "dumb phase" before in my life, and I'm wise enough to know that you just have to accept the phase and go with it. You can't hurry it along, and all the planning and scheming in the world isn't going to get you anything but a list of things that probably won't happen. As the popular Christian saying goes, "Let go, and let God."  Wait on Him and be patient.  Some day He is going to pull the bottle up, uncork it, and pour me out.  But His timing is perfect and until He knows I've moved past the "dumb phase" and am perfectly aged, I'm not really ready for whatever purpose this aging process is pointing me toward.

Luke 5:39  "And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

Lord Jesus, give me patience in the aging process and help me find joy in this day, even though it may feel mundane, the same as yesterday, and less purposeful than what I'd love it to be.