Patience

I LOVE this song.   And the funny thing is, it's been on my MP3 for a long time, but today it said something different than what I usually hear.  It's song #536 of 812, right after the handful of Over the Rainbow songs and right before Peaceful Easy Feeling.  I've listened to it a million times.  But this morning it was different.  Weird, huh?   I sort of love it when that happens, though.  It reminds me that I love these songs for a reason and that they still speak to me even after listening to them for years and years.  (This one hasn't been around that long, but it's an Amy Grant song, so that automatically puts it into the timeless category for me.) 

That song, and everything else about today, made me think about the importance of being patient.  Unfortunately, I don't think that patience was one of those gifts that I came with.  My nature is to be impulsive, to expedite things, to JUST JUMP!  I am naturally inclined to be an instant gratification kind of a girl.  But the great thing is that just because you came a certain way, doesn't mean you have to stay that way.  There are all kinds of things about me that are different than they were before...

• I wasn't a vegetarian before.
• I used to think that my life revolved around my FB account.
• I used to...um...NOT LOVE Visiting Teaching.
• I hated being alone.

So, if all that stuff is different, maybe it's possible to gradually add patience to my list of character traits.   I have come to realize lately that there is value in waiting for things, and sometimes the REALLY good things require a LOT of waiting.  Some things don't happen overnight.  And not everything can be expedited.  I heard myself telling June yesterday that anything worth playing is going to take some time to learn (again...we're still sort of stuck on the piano challenges at our house.)  "If it only takes 30 seconds to learn, you're not going to want to play it for very long."  hmmm...don't you hate it when you hear yourself giving advice that you could actually use??


My biggest challenge with patience in the past has been that I never really enjoyed right now.  I've always been so anxious for TOMORROW that I missed a lot of TODAYs.  There are amazing things coming up that I look forward to, but there are amazing things RIGHT NOW, too, that I definitely don't want to miss.  


So, instead of "JUST JUMP," my new motto is "Be Good.  BE PATIENT.  Don't Forget."