This is the fourth of a 12-part, once-a-month series on the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. This month’s fruit is PATIENCE. Be sure to see previous posts beginning with CHARITY and check back next month as another contributor explores the fruit of KINDNESS.
The other night after dinner, my husband and I {along with the kidlets} were clearing, cleaning and washing dishes while we chatted about the day’s events. A small snippet went like this:
Me: You know, I really feel like the gals are making the blog their own by jumping in with all these great ideas. Kerri had an awesome idea to start a series on the Fruits of the Holy Spirit and the other gals started pitching in with their own contributions and voila! a new idea was born. {stay with me, kind reader – I’m a chatter box} I woke up this morning to see a document had started and several of the ladies had already signed up for their respective fruit they will be writing about. I saw kindness, patience, peace…
Husband: yeah…
Me: Yeah, so I signed up to write about patience.
::crickets::
Husband: you. You? You signed up for patience?
Me: {cutting dear husband off} yeah, yeah, the irony isn’t lost on me on this one.
::Insert the next two days of absolute hell that involved three rounds of confession – I won’t say for whom to protect the not-so innocent-at-the-time::
My brain was racked with ways to really reflect on what patience is…it consumed my daily thoughts until I decided to open up the dashboard and, with the help of some friends who helped me brainstorm, get my thoughts out in a clean post…and I came up with this:
Patience is praying in spite of not knowing the outcome
Patience is dying to self
Patience is a virtue
Patience is listening when you want to talk, waiting when you want to act
Patience is letting your child help you, even though it takes 10 times as long
Patience is trying to find a friend, any friend in your darkest hour and coming up with nothing only to find it’s God who wants you to lay your head on His shoulder
Patience is my Achille’s heel
Patience is while suffering hyperemesis, not biting the head off a well-meaning person who asks you (like every previous day), “Have you tried Saltines?”
Patience is waiting for the words…
Habemus Papam!