Love is patient.

 

Learning patience has become my most recent challenge. After reading 1. Corinthians 13 with one of my adult classes, I decided I would study through the characteristics of love in my quiet times. Especially, since my motto guiding me is "Love knows no borders!" And oh wow! It has been a challenge! So one of the first
characteristics of true love is

       "Love is patient!"
I've established "Patience" deserves its own post just because, as a teacher, it is VITAL for me to learn this, and it really is a quality that distinguishes a great teacher; I realize as I am being annoyed by things, which I was sooo, so bad at as a young student!


Shout out to all my patient teachers throughout my education!!! You are the real heroes of my life!

Anyways, in order to properly understand what patience means, I decided to look up the definition! Google defines patience as the "ability to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering, without becoming annoyed or anxious." WELL! When I read this, I literally laughed out loud. This was accurately describing, exactly what I have not been doing in certain areas of my life, especially when teaching my younger kids. I could not even fathom at how miserably I was failing at being patient. But even more so I realized how patience should not only consist of me holding my tongue when I get frustrated but moreover, it should start inside me. More importantly, in my thoughts and in my heart. Nevertheless, my next step was to see what the Bible says about patience. A few verses in particular caught my attention:

1. Philippians 4:6 - "....but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." 
2. Ephesians 4:2- "With all humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love." 
3. Romans 5:4 - "...endurance produces character and character produces hope...."

Now I looked for verses that were about patience, which was interesting to me, because not all of them specifically use the word "patience." But what struck me about the first verse, was that after saying "do not worry about anything...," the verse tells us to use prayer, and gratuity when communicating requests and asking God for help! Which.....when I am annoyed and frustrated...my first thought would probably not be "let me just give thanks!" ...hehe no! But I did learn a while back, one of the best ways to battle your own pride: humble yourself and be thankful.

In the second verse the words "gentleness", "patience" and "bearing" were words that hit me over the head (I'm not ignoring the rest of the verse I'm just telling you what I noticed). Gentleness is a very hard choice to make when you're angry and frustrated with a child, who repeatedly does not listen, or ignores you on purpose, or consistently disrupts your class. When annoyance turns to frustration and then anger....boy...gentleness is so far away! drawing from the definition of patience: Gentleness with patience could mean I accept this child is going to keep making mistakes, but I can choose be gentle in my corrective treatment, in order to begin a good path of improving those mistakes."Bearing with one another" - when I read this I am reminded of my best friend telling me "sometimes you don't choose who you are in community with. You may not always like the people at your church. But the bible does not say, leave and move on if you can't tolerate them....It says BEAR with THEM, in LOVE!" While the topic, the night we spoke, was about churches, it really applies to any community God puts you in. I am here to serve God as best I can for the people around me. I may not be happy 100% of the time, but I can learn to bear with them in love.

The third verse reminded me that one form of patience is endurance. Patience helps us build up endurance, for the more difficult trials ahead. If I work on my patience now, I may not loose my temper as much in the future! (I make no promises) - SO! How am I going to learn this:

1. Pray!!! 
2. Be grateful to God 
3. Choose to be gentle 
4. Bear with them in love 
5. Remember: you are developing endurance for the future!

The "unofficials":

1. Count from 1-10 slowly 
2. BREATHE!!!! 
   

Now...this is all great and nice in theory....but ironically the day i wrote this down, I had an insanely annoying, frustrating, angering day, where I was not able to show any patience, inside or out! It was so discouraging! But good friends and family reminded me to show myself some patience and grace, and I picked myself up and I'm trying again this week. I will tell you, today I had to make a young girl go back through all her work because she was not doing it correctly, and although she was furious with me and consistently making it clear she was not liking me at that moment, I forced myself to keep my voice low, calm, and gentle, because I knew raising my voice or making it condescending would only make her feel worse. Well, I did have to breathe deeply and count to ten quite often to keep my voice that way... hehe...(trick my dad taught me!).


Believe me, this patience thing is going to wear me down to the core...but I also think it will test me and challenge me even harder! Also...I think a part 2 to this post will be coming soon!

'Cause there are more challenges every day! But some can be fun too!


learning to love patiently,


Jules