Patience & Perseverance

A friend of mine recently said "I think a lot of impatience stems from being self-centered. It's when it's "all about me," that I'm most impatient."

Oh how true!

I remember praying for patience once and God answered in this way....

I was in college and still living at home at 19 years old. I was taking a shower and my mom came in the bathroom with a proposition for me. She asked me if I would be interested in living with my great-grandma to take care of her because she was starting to need someone to stay with her full time and not just have people stop in to check on her occasionally as before. This was a huge deal to me because I had never lived anywhere but home and I had never taken care of anyone full time before. I decided I would move in with her anyway and see what I could do to help. In any case, grandma's kids could sleep alot better at night knowing someone ......who actually loved their mother.....was living with her taking care of her.

Well, things went well for the most part, but I gained a tremendous amount of patience by living with her. She was either becoming senile or she was in the beginning stages of altzheimer's disease. It was about to drive me nuts, but I stuck it out and gained something VERY precious by persevering.

I was given the opportunity, by God, to not only gain patience and the ability to persevere, but I was given the amazing gift of developing a relationship that I never had before with my great-grandma during her last year of life. Her health was good and so no one saw this coming the year before when they asked me to live with her. It was just suppose to be a full-time "babysitting" job.

I prayed for patience and I was miserable. I stuck with it learning perseverance and gained the last year of my great-grandma's life to treasure.

Scary things happen when you pray for patience, but it's worth it in the end. God rewards those who earnestly seek Him.