Patience (Is a Virtue)

“Yep,” I declare, while crunching my last mouthful of buttered popcorn. I now have Mom’s attention from across the table, so I continue my train of thought—“What I am tasting (pointing to my mouth still full of food), is telling my brain (then pointing to my forehead), ‘This is what you have been smelling!!’” As if Sherlock Holmes himself solved the mystery. I could have left the profoundness of the whole ordeal with that simple revelation sentence, but I blurb a few sentences on the note that my brain intelligence could be something that some psychologists might not be able to comprehend. Sometimes those prideful statements come out of my mouth without realization…even if it was a funny one.

One day has led to another and as January ended, today I saw how different puzzle pieces fitted together with something else I said after my MRI. Only a few days after my MRI, I started being open with my family about things on my heart and mind. We weren’t even initially discussing any particular health topics at first, but soon it came about and in an honest sentence, I say, “This disease is teaching me patience,” and without a moment’s hesitation I quickly add, “And I haven’t won that battle yet.” Indeed, even still waiting for MRI results, I have found myself impatient…more at unrest, I suppose—even though I will not be surprised by any news at this point and am at peace with other areas of decisions made beforehand as well. Up until this season in my life, I do not think I would have thought much about everyday patience—my own, much less others who care for me—or maybe it is now that I see how much patience from others I have missed, because I have taken it for granted, like a routine. It is no piece-of-cake to offer my own self substantial patience some days either. How much more patience then from others.

“Painting’s not fun anymore if you can’t do it yourself,” I gripe last week as I am restarting painting. I didn’t mean it, but the words still came out of my mouth making me feel bad right after I said them. It was yet another time that I saw patience in action and I was being humbled by it, knowing that Mom had plenty of other things she could be doing besides opening my paint tubes. Truth is that painting is more fun with someone—painting parties. I simply let my outside frustrations blind my view of this. And the more my body changes, the more I see this happening. I even told a friend when she visited for coffee and cookies, “I don’t want to be grumpy.”

Yesterday’s sermon was about Roadblocks to Joy. I had been emailed the notes, so Dad and I enlarged them to where I could read. Stapled ten pages later, I enjoyed the sermon—first in a long time. We were encouraged to read Philippians and see the roadblocks in our path. In finishing my coffee this morning, I found mine: patience, in my words and actions.

Love is patient. I Corinthians 13:4