Patience

I asked myself this past week what I am suppose to be learning? I am just sitting, not really able to do more, or my breathing gets quite labored. Usually even if I am sick, I still feel like doing something. That is not the case when I have pneumonia, it drains me in a way that I have no desire to do anything. I realize that I need to be more patient. That is hard to do some times, especially when the world and everyone in it, seemed to be going on around me. I ask in my prayers, how can I serve others when I can't even take care of my home and family? Yes, patience is obviously what I need to work on.

Tonight for Family Home Evening, we were going over our calendar for the week and then our lesson was on Patience...how appropriate for me. I will share some of the lesson with you, in hopes that it might be of some benefit.

In the Bible in the book of Romans 5:3-5 we read, through our trials we gain 3 things...Hope, Experience and Patience. In our lesson tonight we learned that from Patience we will cultivate our character, lift our lives and heighten our happiness. All good reasons to have more patience in our trials!

In the lesson we read...Waiting can be hard. Children know it, and so do adults. We live in a world offering fast food, instant messaging, on-demand movies, and immediate answers to the most trivial or profound questions. We don't like to wait. Some even feel their blood pressure rise when their line at the grocery store moves slower than those around them.

Patience----- the ability to put our desires on hold for a time-----is a precious and rare virtue. We want what we want, and we want it now. Therefore, the very idea of patience may seem unpleasant and, at times, bitter.

I learned that patience was far more than simply waiting for something to happen--- patience required actively working toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results didn't appear instantly or without effort.

There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can----working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!  ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

So once again, I will remember to try and be more patient. Try to remember the lessons I need to be learning. And I realize, that I only will learn them if I will be more faithful, hopeful and strive to endure my life's experiences well...even when they don't seem fair. Life...it is certainly a learning experience.

 

"PATIENCE IS WAITING. NOT PASSIVELY WAITING. THAT IS LAZINESS. BUT TO KEEP GOING WHEN THE GOING IS HARD AND SLOW--THAT IS PATIENCE." ~ Unknown

"Patience is the companion of wisdom."  ~Saint Augustine

"PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS"   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

( My dear daughter-in-law is good at photography too, I am surrounded by a whole family of talented people, aren't I lucky? )