I love the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I just don’t love it yet.

2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the Starbucks signature fall drink. This year also marks the earliest Starbucks has ever rolled out the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

It feels too early to me. I have a hard time sipping a Pumpkin flavored drink when its still 103 degrees outside. Something just doesn’t jive between my brain, body, and taste buds.

Seems like the signifiers of the holiday season roll in earlier and earlier each year.

Kmart just released their first Christmas commercial for the year, making it the earliest kickoff to holiday marketing ever according to Ad Age. 

You might be the type of person who starts spinning Christmas music as soon as Labor Day is over. You may be someone who wonders why you can’t have egg nog all year. (Actually I’d be ok with that one.)

In the business world there is constantly a push toward the next. Seasons end before they should have begun. We are Halloween’d out before the 30th of September.

I don’t really think Starbucks or Hallmark even are to blame for pre-Holiday burnout though. Every year our lives cycle through the same peaks and valleys.

The older you get the faster it all goes by. Another pumpkin season blooms as another unbearably hot summer rides away.

As soon as what we’ve been waiting for rolls in we begin to look for the next big season to come in our lives. There’s an anxiousness inside of me as I wait to find my next job. I want so badly to announce my next season of relevance to the world even though I don’t have one yet.

I’ve been away from my job as a youth pastor for over a month now. Or should I say only a month now? Though I don’t want to dive right into a job just because I could use a paycheck, part of me has a hard time resisting the first thing which comes calling.

There is certainly a danger in waiting too long to seize an opportunity, especially when God is screaming in your ear to move. But there is something to be said for patience.

Look at Habakkuk. Habakkuk was a prophet of the Lord. But in the first chapter of his short book we find him lifting up a laundry lists of complaints and questions to God.

Then something rare happens as the second chapter begins:

I will stand on my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected. (Habakkuk 2:1)

Instead of demanding an immediate answer from the Lord, Habakkuk decides to wait. He does not wait passively. He stands at watch, seeking the Lord’s answer.

Habakkuk trusts God will answer in good time. Eventually God’s response comes:

Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” (Habakkuk 2:2-3)

The seasons in your life may not move fast enough for you. God’s response to your questions may not come as quickly as you desire. But it is coming.

As sure as the leaves will change, as sure as the temperatures will drop, as sure as the sun will rise each morning the Lord will come through. There’s no need to rush.

I admit – I snuck in one (iced) Pumpkin Spice Latte the other day. I also bought two packages of Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses, a personal weakness. But I’m gonna wait a little while before I get pulled into PumpkinMania.

The season I’m in still has much to offer and enjoy. There will be plenty of time for the PSL and the arguably more important Peppermint Mocha.

For now I’ll just take my coffee black and enjoy the wait.

What about you? Have you had a Pumpkin Spice Latte yet? Or are you waiting it out?