Patience

Patience.

Yall. On the imaginary scale that measures patience with 10 being Corrie Ten Boom and 1 being a six year old on Christmas morning I’m going to put myself at a solid 1.5, hovering just slightly above a small child, grasping for my dignity.

I am SO not patient.

Let me give you a few examples. When we bought the house we currently live in, we bought it on the courthouse steps at auction. We had no idea how much it would go for or if we could even afford it. Spencer went to the auction when it started right at 10 am. I taught my 10 am class at the Y, picked up Ford (who was two at the time) from preschool, ran by the Scoop to pick up some lunch and gunned it over to the courthouse where Spencer was still waiting for the yellow house on Jefferson to come up.

I was secretly thrilled it hadn’t been called yet- I wanted to be there when it did. Because of course, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) goes hand in hand with lack of patience. We devoured our lunch and waited. And waited. I paced. I chased Ford. I checked my watch. All the while, my heart going double the speed of a normal human’s. “Are you freaking out?” I asked Spencer, literally bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet in front of him. My calm, stable husband replied “I wasn’t until you got here.”

Oops. I just couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen.

And then there’s smaller things- waiting to hear if our babysitter can in fact watch our kids and give us a night off. Waiting to hear back from the doctor about lab results. Waiting to win the lottery. Okay well that’s not very realistic, but you get the picture.

I know, it’s ridiculous.

And this is why writing is such an important exercise for me. An exercise in working on the patience that does not come naturally to me. Working on something for a long time, with no guarantees, no quick payoffs, no easy outs. Working on a lot of little somethings that may one day turn into something big, something worth waiting for, something worth all the extra energy it took to sit and be still with myself every day one day at a time for as long as it takes.  

Patience is a virtue, they say, and I see why. I’m working on mine.