What I Have Learned About Patience

Has not come easy. The only way to learn about patience is to practice it, and mess up a lot, and then get back on your feet and try it again. Patience is learned through trials, through opportunities to be patient. I am not naturally patient; I want things quickly. Yet this is not life. Life is a long journey, though perhaps at the end I will not say that.

One thing that has tried my patience again and again has been my body. Since I was 12 I have had a digestive system that demands attention, quality everything, and refuses to accept thoughtless gifts. It will only accept the best, and even then it won’t always enjoy it. For 11 years I have been learning to work with it. On occasion I have sought out the advice of doctors, hoping they will have the answer that will fix everything, but none ever have. This spring I was the closest to getting an answer, yet the answer came with no magic fix-it pill or potion. It came with a long-term diet, medication to take for life, and lots of ideas to try out: nothing quick, nothing to fix it and move on to careless eating. In fact, I am more careful than ever.

This has tried my patience again and again. At times I try and ignore what I know about my stomach and just eat what everyone else does; yet this always brings about a swift dose of remorse. Lately even the healthy foods I eat bring that about. After 11 years of searching for a quick fix and an easy out I have come to a place today where I am able to accept I will be working this out my whole life. I am not giving up and I hope to one day find a way of living that brings peace to my body, I have just recognized this will take a long time. It will take lots of trial and error and patience as I give the trials more than a day or two to work themselves out. It will also take patience to sit through the pain and discomfort at times as I work this out. My body is teaching me patience.

This spring I learned to be patient in school. First day of spring quarter I wanted to run away, be free of everything I hated about school, and mostly be free of the panic that welled up in my chest every time I stepped foot in a classroom or sat down to write a paper. I would have run had it not been for a few wise people in my life encouraging me to sit in it and see what it was. One of them said, with knowledge that can only come from experience, whatever was causing me to panic would probably come up again no matter what I did so I would have to face it sooner or later. I decided to face it sooner. I sat in it. It took half the quarter to be willing to sit through a class and stare it in the face, but I got there because I stayed. I was patient in the panic and now I do not fear it half as much as I did before. I know if I face it I will not implode or explode. The root of panic is not panic, it is sadness, or yearning for something different, or a part of myself screaming for recognition. The end result was the same, I dropped out of school, but it wasn’t running away out of fear. It was calmly walking away, knowing it was time to leave, not panicking or carelessly leaving, it was moving forward to the next thing. Patience was learned again.

Patience was something I learned a lot about in Uganda. It was a necessary thing to have there, as many things took longer than I wanted them to: like dinner or laundry or relationships. Often I was in awkward situations that I wished to get out of, they weren’t bad or harmful, just awkward, uncomfortable. Sometimes I did run, and now I wish I could have a second chance. I learned that sitting in an awkward situation and resisting the desire to run could bring about surprises I would never have seen if I had run. Like hearing my Uganda Dad call me his daughter and realizing he meant it. If I had fled that awkward situation my heart would not have received that gift of healing. Patience brought about healing.

Today I wrote an e-mail to my older sister. She and I love each other so much, but we do not often get to talk or hang out because of the way our lives have gone thus far. It just has not been possible. Today, as wrote the e-mail, I recognized the opportunity to be patient. We are sisters, we always will be, there is nothing we can do to change that for good or bad. With the knowledge that our relationship is secure and sort of unchangeable I found a new depth of patience for the chance to really know each other. I am not afraid of losing her if we don’t act quickly and with that fear absent I found within my heart the patience to trust that one day the time will be ripe for us to be in better contact. That day is not today, it might be years before it comes; yet I know she loves me and I love her, so I am patient. It does not take away the yearning. It does reduce the twitching need for action and subdue the panic and fear, however.

I have much more to learn about patience, my friends, but I have learned enough about it to recognize it will take much more patience to learn the art of patience. For patience is an art, a skill that can be learned and practiced, it is not a virtue only few are blessed with. We are all capable of patience; it just takes patience to realize it.