There’s a reason why “patience” is a virtue

My guess is that for most people who strive to accomplish things patience is not a quality high on the “must have” list. At the same time, it’s a quality that I bet many of those same people point to (in another person) and say with awe, “wow he/she is so patient!”

It’s almost like being IMpatient is a necessary engine to get things done. I used to think that. As a result, the kissing cousin to impatience, frustration, was right there too. Annoying.

A few years ago I was working on a project that seemed to go on forever and wasn’t productive. Every attempt made to close it out just didn’t work and I was unhappy with the lack of progress. I got to thinking, “this has been going on for months with no change and all I can see is more months of this.” Frustration big time, per usual. But this time, I prayed.

I prayed to listen to whatever God wanted me to know at that moment. I pushed out all the unhappy, frustrating, stressful thoughts and just listened. What came to me was…”patience.” But not patience relative to time passing,  patience without any concept of time.

Ooooh, this was huge to me. Like, get rid of the time element and know that patience means waiting on God to move, adjust, reveal whatever needs to be moved, adjusted, revealed. In God’s “time” (which is spiritual), not my time (which is definitely temporal). And since it is in God’s time, then there can be no suffering, no sacrifice, no loss of any kind. Only divine peace.

Think about it. This notion of “time” really turns things inside out and adds a negative dimension to daily activities. When you eliminate time from working out problems, a lot of the stress goes away and you can think more in the present, in the NOW.

Forget “I am under deadline, I don’t have time for this!” or “I have been sick too long,” or “I have been stuck in this [job, place, relationship, etc.] for too long.”  How much better to focus on just the now, like “Right now God loves me and wants only good for me at this very moment…Right now I have all I could ever want because God has given it to me.” Then, being steadfast to just the present, just what you know is right now, can keep you in a series of moments that are good, positive and uplifting. No time element, just the divine now.

One of my most influential spiritual authors, Mary Baker Eddy, writes a lot about patience. And usually includes it with the idea of unconditional love. So, patience with love is way more peaceful and uplifting than patience with time!

This totally released all the stress and unhappiness I was feeling about this project. Each day I listened for what new activity I could do, on this project or other projects. And new things came to me to do. I was active, productive and happy. Within a month or so, the project I USED to be so impatient about was closed out, to everyone’s satisfaction.

Patience is a quality of the Supreme Being. And since this Being is the creator of all beings, then we each must reflect this quality too. So it isn’t “out there” in someone else, it is right “in here”, in everyone’s divine and spiritual DNA.