Patience is the hardest discipline.

Patience is *not* waiting-for-a-predetermined time. I thought that for years, and counted myself extremely patient, as I can wait in stillness and peace… when I know when my time will be up. But this is not patience. Patience is waiting for completion.

Not only is patience hard for just us humans (and it is), our culture actively devalues patience. You’re just not supposed to wait for things “passively”. If you’re waiting, you’re not doing, and as Americans, we must always be doing. We must always press forward to the goal.

There is a time and place for that advice. There are many who dream and do not work. We should encourage them to press forward.

It reminds me of a fairytale in Lang’s Green Fairy Book, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida. In that story, the hero and heroine each have to learn the virtues the other possesses in order to (as they think) save the other. We must know the virtue of pursuit, and we must know the virtue of patience.

Patience is the hardest discipline for me. And I thought I’d learned it, but I am being humbled. I wait, and wait, for a dream I cannot reach on my own. Imagine a mountaintop, and the cliff below is sheer and unclimbable. I sat and waited for a while. I knitted a ladder. I got up and walked ’round, looking for another way. I took climbing lessons. Why did I do all that? Because I’m me – a modern American woman, a hard worker, and I believe that if I don’t get something, it’s because I didn’t work hard enough.

I dragged out my dreams and reviewed them in prayer. I did that time and time and time again, and I’m still doing it. Examining microscopically to see if I can find a way, should find a way. Earlier in my wait, I examined them to see if they were really dreams for me at all. At this point I’ve sat with them so long I know they’re mine… but I can’t reach. I cannot reach.

That’s a terrible thing to say. It’s culturally insensitive, and personally upsetting. But patience is the hardest discipline, and it brings with it humility.

I wait, and I am instructed to “wait with excellence”. How does one do that? I think the journey might take me through doing things day by day, working on excellence in each daily choice rather than making grand plans for months on end. I’m an excellent planner – I am not an excellent “be-in-the-moment-er”. So, to become humble, and learn where I do not especially wish to learn.

But patience is the hardest discipline, and she brings with her much fruit on stems covered with thorns. Am I offering advice, as a patient person? I am not. I am writing to others who, like me, live in modern America, who were raised to “do big things”. Sit with me and learn. Perhaps we can compare notes.