P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E.

Patience is waiting all year for your birthday. Patience is spending the last year of high school making the most of every memory and moment while planning the next stage of your life. Patience is deciding on a college degree and working diligently for four years to accomplish it. Patience is interviewing for your first job and waiting and waiting and waiting for that return call. Patience is planning a wedding for a years time. Patience is feeling your baby grow within you and desperately wanting to meet her. Patience is wanting something, one thing, so badly, and waiting until someone else decides it is exactly the right thing for them.

Patience is not a virtue that I poses in most cases, most scenarios, generally in life. The idea of biding my time until it is the “right” time is a theory I struggle with. Waiting for the right emotional moment, for myself, for someone else, that is not easy for me. And the whole concept of “timing” or “the timing just wasn’t right”, I never quite subscribed to it. I always felt, all someone had to do was keep fighting, continue to be persistent and at some point in some way, what was desired would happen.

As an adult and quite frankly into my thirties really… I discovered patience. It still doesn’t come easily. But, the life I live now is filled with people, personalities, struggles and magic. With all that is happening comes a need for patience. There are so many schedules and so many wants and needs, so many times where all that I have is my patience.

After all this time, slowly but surely, I am seeing that patience does pay off. Taking that deep breath while Avery is throwing a tantrum, slowing down for a moment to breathe through the crazy busy work day, taking that momentary pause prior to starting a fight, not putting negative energy into frustrating moments, it all takes patience. After two years A’s father is able to take Avery for an entire weekend, having had the patience to wait until his schedule permitted it and to have the patience to allow him to get there on his own terms made the reward of it happening so much sweeter.

So, today I am grateful for the patience I have developed as it has taught me that people will get there. People will get to what is important to them, what they long to become, the time the long to have, when they are able to. My patience has taught me how to hold a crying toddler for an hour and a half with no understanding of her tears. And patience has prevented a lot of fights that I would have previously engaged in. Today I am grateful that this is a virtue I am developing.