Patience is a Necessity

By Nichole Giles

I’ve always considered myself a patient person. Mostly. I try to be patient with my kids, my husband, other people—not that I’m always successful, but I try really hard. I love Christmas, and vacations, and have several goals for my future—for instance, having one of my books published—and I do my best to be patient for those things too.

Today, I’m not talking about the kind of patience that keeps you from having a screaming bawling tantrum in your living room when you come home to discover a cyclone (named ‘kids’) has hit, destroying everything in its path. Right now, I’m talking about the having patience with the things you want for your future. The kind of patience that keeps you standing on your tiptoes and peering over a fence, hoping someday, somehow, your grass will be that perfect shade of green.

Sometimes it’s tough. As hard as we try, as badly as we want certain things, they just don’t always come on our chosen timeline. However easy it is for us to see whatever it is within our grasp, even when it looks so close we could reach out and touch it if we tried hard enough, we still have to wait. Be patient. See the goal in the future, not the desire of today.

Sigh. But sometimes having patience is so hard!

What happens, then, if we reach out, stretching as far and as thin as we can in order to grab that thing that seems so close? Well, usually, if the timing is wrong, we miss. Whether we miss big or small becomes irrelevant because in the end, we come away without that thing we have always wanted and never quite been able to grasp.

Still, we continue to try. Because to give up would be to admit defeat, and that would be unacceptable.

I am a patient person. But I wonder how long a person should wait before she runs screaming, full boar into the future, blazing like an inferno, and crying, “Here I am, give me everything I ever wanted and more!”

Oh, but wait. One second. I just had a thought. If I suddenly got everything I ever wanted—if all the things I’ve been waiting for all my life came to me in one day, what would I have left to look forward to? Nothing. Or maybe everything. Maybe I’d want a whole new set of things, a whole new kind of life, and then I’d have to start the cycle all over again.

So, basically, we are required to have a certain degree of patience. It’s an important element in the cycle of life. And even though we get really darn sick of waiting for all our dreams to come true, sometimes, that’s the only thing we can do.

Have patience. Wait. Everything will all work out for the best in the cosmic scheme of things.

Someday.