Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Patience is a many-splendoured Thing

My mother was a wise woman. She spoke with calm deliberation, and frequently counseled patience.

"Patience is a virtue," she would say, or "Patience is always rewarded."

As a young child, I didn't really understand what patience was. I thought it meant not fidgeting in church.

As I matured into an adolescent, I began to believe that it was the ability to look forward and wait without undue fuss for the next stage, the next development, the next accomplishment, knowing these things would come in the fullness of time.

Still, I couldn't help myself. I wanted immediate action, immediate results. Waiting was hard, and so was uncertainty about its outcome.

I felt angry and frustrated when my mother told me that there were some things I would be able to understand only when I was older. "Experience is the great teacher" was another of her sayings.

But I wanted to be the exception to the rules about patience and experience. I wanted immediate results that would prove my mother's old-fashioned sayings wrong.

Patience took time to develop, for myself and for others. It arrived by imperceptible degrees, helped along by marriage, raising our daughter, having my husband's people live with us and learning their language one slow word or phrase at a time.

Now that our daughter is grown, and our lives are quieter, I've developed a new perspective on patience: it builds soul. The slow maturing of a soul can be likened to food prepared in a slow cooker, or wine aged over time with a focus on quality rather than speed.

Soul-building happens slowly and requires great patience.

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