Patience

I've been doing a crummy job of practicing patience lately.

The children laugh and yell in the back seat of the car and I can't seem to stay focused on the road. I ask/beg them to be quiet. They don't. I lose it.

My brother hired an independent assessor to look at the cottage. We are waiting for it to be completed so that we can know if he will sell. Once the decision is made we can move forward with the purchase of a new house (they accepted our purchase offer this week, yay!!!!).

I want the cottage sale to happen NOW. I'm tired of the stress of not meeting deadlines for the purchase of our house. W (age 6) came to me bawling last night, "I dooon't waaaant to sell the cotttttage." I don't either. There are many reasons that make it so...we have to.

Can we please just get it over with?

Yesterday I waited on a couple I've looked down upon for several years (yes, I know). I met them when they were both college students...he, married and in his 40's and she, in her late teens and mentally challenged. He left his family to live with her.

Because of a system error her new phone wouldn't activate. 3 hours later...

I behaved poorly. I whined. I said things I shouldn't have. I offered to give her a ride home after he left her and went to work.

This caused a scene with my new Manager who now thinks I have very poor judgement.

I can do better.


Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
- Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

“Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk.”
- Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990)

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope, and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.
- Richard Cecil

“Patience is also a form of action.”
- Auguste Rodin, sculptor (1840-1917)