Patience is a Virtue

I can so easily hear the voice of my mom and my grandma firmly saying to me,

"Patience is a virtue

Virtue is grace

All put together make a very pretty face."

To this day, my instinct is to roll my eyes and defiantly declare that I will then never have a pretty face. Oh, how I struggle with patience. Struggle may even be putting it mildly. More like I am at war with patience...

 all the time. 

It seems that every day, my patience is tested. It's funny to me that at the end of my last post, I mentioned that I was as a kite, rising. Well, that's how I felt at the time of writing. In real life though, I feel like a kite that is plummeting, loop de looping, taped together and barely hanging on by the string. April was windy and patience was low. I had aspirations that May would be less windy and patience would, in turn, be higher. My proverbial kite would just dance through the breeze, awing everyone by the grace in which it danced through the breeze. 

This season of life is intense. Maybe all seasons really are but you just notice it differently. We recently bought our first house (yard makeover pictures coming in June when the budget allows for hanging plants and what not). House buying really tests ones patience and ones marriage. Husband saw sides of me that should, and did, petrify him at the thought of being homeowners together. Work is always crazy. It seems like more I try to accomplish the more behind I get. And yes, I still lack patience. 

Today, I'm waiting to hear back about some blood work I had done to see if my thyroid is behaving as God intended it to. And I jump every time the phone rings. I spend too much time googling how a hypo-thyroid is going to change my life. A brief phone call to my ever incredible and level headed sister gave me a quick smack back to the land of the patient. She gently reminded me that the more I worry and am impatient about my life, the more I let it go by without living it. I only get this life, one time. Just once. What's the point in being so impatient that I lack grace, a pretty face and just the general goodness that comes from living purposed (and patient)?! 

It's funny how the thing that you struggle with most can cause the huge amounts of growth. Anytime I'm patient I feel like giving myself a medal (don't worry, there is nowhere near enough of those moments to have a trophy shelf, let alone wall or room).  But it's not a medal I've earned. It's one more minute, one more hour, one more time of swallowing a snarky response, one more positive way to show myself patience can be sought after and I'm a little stronger than I was last time. The smallest battle is sometimes the key to the greatest victory. 

So this is me, impatient. Trying to get a grasp on one thing at a time. Seeking ways to encourage patience in myself. Maybe I should drink more wine. Maybe I should count to 48,920 by one's as opposed to counting to ten. Or maybe I should stop blogging about being impatient and go and practice being patient outside of the internet. 

Wish me luck. And if you find me with wine, you'll know I'm failing.