What Waiting Is Teaching Me (While the Permits Sit on Someone Else’s Desk)

There’s a particular kind of waiting that comes with building a home. Not the romantic, HGTV kind. The bureaucratic kind. The kind where nothing is visibly happening, yet everything depends on it. Right now, it’s permits.

There are no walls going up or exciting deliveries; no progress photos worth posting. Just… pause. And here’s the inconvenient truth: this part may be the most instructive of all.

Patience, Rebranded

In your 20s, patience feels like deprivation. In your 30s and 40s, it feels like inefficiency. Over 50, it starts to look a lot like discernment. This season exposes a quiet shift: the need to rush has loosened its grip. (If you let it.)

It’s not gone, just easier to keep in check. Believe me, selling our house has woken up a different kind of impatience we can discuss another day – so it’s definitely not gone! Maybe there’s just more tolerance of the unknown because you’ve lived enough to know:

• Fast doesn’t guarantee better
• Delayed doesn’t mean denied
• And not every gap needs to be filled

Waiting stops being a problem to solve and becomes a space to observe. (Once again, if you let it. Are you sensing a theme here?)

The Empty Nest Parallel

There’s a reason this hits differently now. The house you’re building isn’t just about square footage—it’s about transition. For years, life was scheduled around movement:

• Practices, games, and meets
• Pickups, carpools, and sleepovers
• Packed calendars with no space to rest
• Constant noise, constant activity

Now? There’s space. The same kind of space that exists in this permit delay. And if you resist it, it feels uncomfortable. If you lean in, it feels… honest. Both seasons ask the same question:

Who are you when nothing urgent is demanding your attention?

The Gen X Advantage

There’s a special strength in being part of this generation. We grew up analog, adapted to digital, and now exist somewhere in between—skeptical of urgency, but fluent in it. This moment highlights a few earned advantages:

• We don’t need constant validation to trust a decision
• We’ve seen enough cycles to know things work out… just rarely on our preferred timeline
• We’re less interested in proving, more interested in experiencing

Waiting, in this context, becomes less about delay and more about calibration.

The Discipline of Being Present

What I’ve been guilty of missing during this process, and I think others miss too, is that waiting is not wasted time. It’s unstructured time. It’s uncertain time.

Unstructured time reveals habits quickly. Habits like reaching for distraction (“I really need to do this online shopping for more clothes”), creating artificial urgency (“there is uncertainty, I must be unsafe”), and filling silence with noise (“there has to be some way for me to solve this problem and gain certainty.”)

Or maybe you can just use this time differently. This stretch—before construction starts—is one of the only phases where you’re not reacting, rushed or making decisions under pressure. It’s a rare pocket of clarity or a chance to revisit choices without stress, refine—not overhaul—your vision, actually imagine living in the space you’re creating. Because once it starts, it moves fast.

Control vs. Trust

Permits are a masterclass in letting go. You’ve done your part. Plans are submitted and details finalized. Boxes are checked. But now? It’s in someone else’s hands.

And that tension—the gap between effort and outcome—is where most frustration lives. But it’s also where trust can be built. I’m not talking about blind optimism, just measured trust in the process. Trust in the fact that you’ve prepared well, made thoughtful decisions and that the timeline will unfold as it’s meant to. There’s power in that stance. Quiet, steady power.

A Different Kind of Progress

Nothing looks like it’s happening. But internally? A lot is. You’re accomplishing things like clarifying what actually matters in this next chapter, letting go of urgency that no longer serves you, and practicing patience in a way that feels grounded, not forced. You’re learning and growing right along with the process.  

This is progress that won’t show up in a construction update. But it will show up in how you live once the house is done.

Oh, By the Way…

We’ve been playing the waiting game on the home-selling front at the same time, so it’s been a lot to deal with at once. While I was writing this post, we received and accepted an offer on the wonderful little house that raised our family. So if you’re grappling with uncertainty or struggling to find patience to wait out permits or your perfect buyer, hang on.

Good things really do come to those who find the patience to wait.