Patience

Patience.

Something I desperately need more of today. and every day.

I never knew that I was an impatient person until I had children.  I am not an impatient driver.  I don't mind waiting in lines at the grocery store.  I prefer to drive in the slow lane on the Interstate.  I am not rushed at restaurants.  But having children has a way of humbling us and bringing us to a place where we must die to ourselves.  It puts us in a place of seeing all of our faults and bringing us to our knees in a necessary need of God.  And for me, I have learned that I am, indeed, quite impatient.

One child wants to sit in a certain chair at breakfast and so throws a fit that he cannot, another child escapes from her chair, hands full of peanut butter, to run to the couch and the computer, and a third child decides he needs another waffle just as I am sitting down with my toast and tea.  A cup of water gets spilled, the same toddler throwing a fit now has decided to have his waffle cut instead of uncut, and the baby is getting fussy in her highchair, ready for her baby food and her morning nap.  We are running late, the boys are not picking up the toys I have asked them to, and my crazy girl has now decided to take off her diaper and pants during her time out in the crib.  One.  more.  thing. happens...one more act of disobedience, one more sassy comment, one more mess, and I can lose it.

Patience.  What I so desperately want and need.

Patience, for me, is the area in which I have been the most aware of my sinfulness since having my kids.  For I have come to the place where I cannot "control" this other human being(s) and that becomes a difficult concept to accept and embrace.  I have a picture of the way I want things to go, and my little humans actually are not perfect (the nerve!), nor are they perfectly in tune with my plan!

I have prayed and read and learned and observed all different ways to be patient.  I am daily trying, trying, and praying for patience and a calm spirit and a right perspective. Sometimes, I get it right.  But other times, I fail.  And I fail again.  And again.

I am an imperfect work of progress, as one friend wisely described it today.  I am learning and growing, and not in a perfect way, but in a very real, imperfect way.

Change can only happen, though, by the power of the Holy Spirit in me to give me self-control.  Whenever I try to muster up enough strength to do it on my own, I fail again.  So I need our full-of-grace God to work in and through me to make me a new creation and to transform this part of my heart and life.

I have decided that I need to start memorizing some verses from Scripture pertaining to patience.  I want God's word to be written on my heart, and I know that memorizing these powerful truths can empower me and give me tools toward change.

Care to join me in some memorization of patience passages?  How great to know we are not alone!

These are what I found today...

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." (Ephesians 4:2)

"May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer." (Psalm 19:14)

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." (Ephesians 4:29)

"Love is patient, love is kind...It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)

So thankful for a God who gives us grace and gives us the strength to become less so He can become greater in us.  And greater is HE than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

Anxious to see the story continue to unfold, for our journeys are never over.

We are all an imperfect work of progress.