Some Thoughts About Patience

I have recently been thinking about patience and I realized that there are many areas of my life that require a great deal of patience. As a sailing instructor teaching middle schoolers how to sail, there are times that my patience is tested. Usually, when I tell people that I work with middle schoolers seven hours a day, they wish me luck, but I have learned to love them and embrace the stage of life that they are in. One of my favorite things about this age is how much fun they are. That being said, sometimes they struggle to have a serious moment and listen well. There are weeks that my class tests my patience, but I am grateful for the ways God is equipping me through these moments. God is at work in these frustrating moments where my patience is tested, during the mundane of going to work every day, and during the moments of joy and fun. 

Another area of my life I realized requires patience is with my horse, Peanut. Unfortunately, Peanut’s previous owner didn’t know how to handle her well and it caused her to be very anxious by the time I got her. I’ve had Peanut for five years now and she’s mostly perfect, but it took a long time, a lot of work, and a ton of patience to get where we are now. When I first bought Peanut, she had a bucking problem, then she developed a rearing problem, and more recently she would run into walls while I was riding her. As frustrating as all of these challenges were, being angry with her wasn’t the solution. Rather, I needed to be patient and allow the progress to be slow. Just like how I am grateful for how God has used my middle schoolers to teach me things and grow in patience, I am grateful for what I have learned from Peanut and how my patience has grown. I am excited to see how God uses these lessons around the world!

As I was thinking about the way God has blessed me with opportunities to grow my patience, I realized that I am impatient with God. I’m patient with my middle school students and my horse, but when it comes to God, I don’t like to wait. When I say a prayer, I want it answered immediately. I’ve noticed that when I need to wait, I get discouraged. I have seen God move and perform miracles around me, but when my prayer isn’t answered as soon as I’ve prayed it, I stop praying because I’m discouraged. Instead of becoming discouraged, I should faithfully wait in obedience with the trust that God is working out something better. For example, while I was at school, I had no direction and no idea what I wanted to choose as a major. It seemed that everyone around me had a plan for the rest of their lives, but I had no clue. As I sobbed through prayers of feeling discouraged and stuck, I had no idea the plan that God was working out. A year ago I would have called you crazy if you told me where I am now. I didn’t see what God was doing when he didn’t answer my prayers about my future as a student, but I can see now that he had something else for me. 

Another time that comes to mind is from my junior year of high school. I went to a Christian school and we had Chapel three times a week in high school. Occasionally, a student would speak about what God was teaching them and how he was moving in their lives. As a freshman, I thought it would be cool to be the chapel speaker at some point, but I didn’t think of it again until my junior year when I felt God put it on my heart to speak. I have come to learn that God can have a sense of humor because I felt he had put it on my heart to speak in chapel, but he didn’t tell me what he wanted me to speak about – not yet, at least. I spent several weeks praying and talking with my mentors, trying to figure out what God wanted me to speak about. One day, it suddenly came to me what God wanted me to speak about. I was so excited that God had answered my prayers that I wanted to stand up and scream for joy, but I was in an assembly and had to be quiet and respectful. For the rest of the assembly, I sat with a grin on my face and was hardly able to sit still. What I learned from this experience is how to rely on God and wait for his answer. When God doesn’t answer right away, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to. Today I am grateful that He didn’t answer my prayer immediately because I learned so much about relying on prayer and grew in my relationship with God from the experience. 

In Genesis, God made a promise to 100-year-old Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. As someone who grew up hearing the story of Abraham and Sarah, the shock of God’s promise lost its surprise factor. It would have been easy for Abraham and Sarah to discredit God, but instead, they faithfully waited. They waited and trusted that God would fulfill his promise to them because they had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t. Even in the Bible, God doesn’t always answer a prayer immediately, but he makes people wait. In the waiting, we don’t know why God hasn’t answered yet, but he is at work. When we are in times of waiting, I think it is important to remain faithful in prayer, stay hopeful, and remember that we don’t need to worry because God is the author. We don’t know the ending that has already been written, so we need to trust the one who has written it.