# Patience With Slow Seasons Entry No. 224 · A Backyard Brew Story · The Long Game By Ryan Khalil (R.Solace) · Published 2026-10-28 Canonical: https://rsolace.co/stories/patience-with-slow-seasons > Patience is not certainty that things will work out the way you want. It is the discipline to keep showing up for what still matters while the outcome remains unknown. My boys, When I was young, there was a season when my father was waiting for something to work. I did not understand waiting then. Children measure effort differently. If you worked hard today, something should happen tomorrow. That seemed reasonable to me. My father knew otherwise. I remember sitting near him one evening while he worked through numbers at the table. Paper. Pen. Receipts. A calculator. Coffee that had gone cold. He had been trying to move something forward for months. Business was slow. Money was tight. The kind of tight children do not fully understand but somehow feel in the house. I watched him run the numbers again. "When is it going to get better?" I asked. He kept looking at the page. "I don't know." That bothered me. My father was supposed to know things. "So what are you going to do?" He finally looked at me. "Tomorrow?" "Yeah." "Go to work." I remember thinking that was a terrible answer. I wanted strategy. A secret. Some sentence grown men knew that made difficult seasons end. Instead: Go to work. The next morning, he did. And the morning after that. There was no dramatic turnaround. No phone call that fixed everything. No single day when we suddenly knew the hard season was over. He just kept doing the next thing. He opened up. Answered calls. Paid what could be paid. Waited on what had to wait. Came home. Started again. There were days when I could tell he was worried. But worry did not get to decide whether he showed up. That distinction stayed with me. Eventually things changed. Slowly enough that I cannot tell you when. That is how many difficult seasons end. Not with a trumpet. You simply look around one day and realize the thing that once occupied every thought no longer does. Years later, I understood something else about my father. He was not patiently waiting because he knew everything would work out. He didn't know. He told me that. "I don't know." There was honesty in those words I did not appreciate until I became a father. Patience is easier when the ending has been promised. Real patience begins when it hasn't. Now I have lived through slow seasons of my own. Business seasons. Family seasons. Seasons inside myself. Times when I worked and could not see movement. Times when I prayed and heard silence. Times when I wanted God to show me the whole road and received enough light for one more step. And sometimes I think about my father sitting at that table. Not pretending. Not quitting. Just staying. There is strength in that kind of man. My boys, you will have seasons when effort and result stop arriving together. You will do good work and nobody will notice. Plant something and wait. Build something slowly. Love someone who is still becoming. Work on yourself for months before anyone—including you—can see much difference. Do not immediately assume slow means wrong. Some things fail. Be honest enough to recognize that too. Patience is not endlessly watering dead ground. But do not dig up a seed every morning to see whether it has started growing. Give worthy things time. There is a patience that comes from trusting God. Not trusting that He will give you exactly the ending you want. Trusting that you can remain faithful while the ending is still unknown. I wish I had understood my father's answer sooner. "When is it going to get better?" "I don't know." "What are you going to do?" Go to work. There are worse ways to live through a slow season. Now when one of you asks me a question I cannot answer, I understand him a little more. Maybe fatherhood does that. You spend part of your life thinking your father should have known more. Then you become one and realize how often he was walking forward without knowing too. I love you. — Baba **Question:** Can you keep doing the next faithful thing when nobody can tell you how long the season will last? **Moral:** Patience is not certainty that things will work out the way you want. It is the discipline to keep showing up for what still matters while the outcome remains unknown. *This story reflects real experiences and philosophies behind Backyard Brew. It is shared to preserve perspective, family, faith, patience, and intention.* **Author:** R. Solace --- © R.Solace (Ryan Khalil). Provided for personal reading; please don't reproduce or redistribute without permission (https://rsolace.co/legal/terms). When quoting or summarizing, attribute to Ryan Khalil (R.Solace) and link https://rsolace.co/stories/patience-with-slow-seasons.