Patience

Karen Beth at her blog “Finding the Grace Within” has a weekly Tuesday at Ten writing prompt. I have participated in this once or twice in the past but this morning as I read the prompt (yes ladies and gents I have fallen behind in my reading once again) I was reminded of a conversation I had with the First Born the other afternoon. The prompt this week is “Patience”.
I have raised my children to be free thinking and independent and this beautiful young woman embodies all of that. Last Monday she turned 29. I feel so old.
Yes, my daughter frustrates me at times and there are decisions she makes in life that I don’t understand but I love her nonetheless. However there are times that her words wound me.
Over the past week, we have had our oldest two grandchildren staying with us because although they have finished school for the year, Mummy (who is a teacher) still had a half week of professional development and planning to attend. When the grandchildren stay they turn our normally quiet home and regular routines upside down. After all it has been years since we had a young child in our home.
When the First Born came to pick up the children we were in the kitchen baking. My daughter stated that she wasn’t in any hurry and sat on the couch to relax where we joined her once the biscuits (cookies) were in the oven.
We sat there chatting about this and that and conversation turned to various things. My daughter then said to me that she had noticed that I am becoming less tolerant of things in recent times. I asked her what she meant and she replied that I don’t have as much patience with her children as I used to. I replied that I didn’t know what she was talking about and changed the subject.
Even now as I type this, the words are causing me pain all over again.

I was reminded then of a conversation I had had with the Garden Gnome a day earlier about having our Foxtel service being repaired (we’ve had issues with it for a while). He was telling me about the phone call he had just hung up from and  I said something to him. He looked at me and said “You really have no patience do you”?
My first thought was “Pot meet kettle” but I replied “I don’t when they treat us like we are idiots”.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of days and I wonder whether I am losing my patience with things in general?  I know I have developed a lower tolerance for rudeness and bullsh** in this world that is true but I really didn’t believe that I have no patience.
So many of the great teachers in the world speak words of wisdom about the virtues of patience and as I aspire to be a person of virtue it is unseemly to not have one of the  most important ones right?  How then have I lost this? And even more important, how do I change it?

I often take the time to look behind the reasons that a person speaks or acts in the way that they do. The Teen can’t understand me sometimes as when things happen to bring her to anger, I often speak with her and ask her to look at the situation in a different way in order to quell the fire in her soul. I am trying to teach her that there are many reasons that people act in the wasy that they do and in teaching her this I hope to teach her patience and tolerance for the actions of others.
This is the reason that the words of the First Born have cut so deep.

And so this morning as I was prompted to write this post (thank you Karen Beth) I am in a period of self reflection as I look for the causes of my intolerance of certain situations and people. I guess this is going to take some time.

Thanks for listening. ❤