To Be Patient

I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace… (Ephesians 4: 1-3)

“Are you patient?”

Mass had just concluded in the prison and the guy next to me posed this question. I thought for a second and replied with the affirmative. I think I am typically a patient person although I sometimes have my moments of losing my calm and forbearance.

“Are you patient?” I asked, turning the question back to him. Then for a while we discussed his gradual growth in patience as well as his desire to share this knowledge and growth with those near him.

Yet despite the simple question and my quick reply, the question remained lingering in my mind throughout the day.

Am I patient?

I kept trying to reassure myself that by many accounts I am incredibly patient. Sometimes students, a group of people generally not prone to throw out random compliments to their teachers, will even comment on my great patience. Occasionally this is in comparison to other teachers and at other times it is just a general statement that they think I am incredibly patient.

Regardless of these affirmations, I kept the question before me. As I started pulling up weeds and thistles in my yard, I knew I should patiently and tenderly extricate the roots from the ground. Yet I recognized that sometimes I just plucked off the visible part of the thistle, leaving the roots to simply grow and flourish again.

So maybe I’m just not very patient with weeds.

Seeing this, I found myself trying to be a bit more gentle, wiggling the leaves and slowly pulling up the long, burrowing root. It was impressive how small the weed could be above the surface and yet how long and spindly the roots could be. Several times I was amazed at what was hidden from view, what energy and strength the weed had poured into what would sustain it and not simply what I found as a nuisance in my yard.

Almost necessarily, I made the connection between these weeds and my heart.

Sometimes, I want to dig below the surface of my heart, to find the tendrils of sin and vice that have woven into the fibers of my being and to extricate them, gently and deliberately. I want to care for the health of this little heart, making it as healthy and as whole as it can possibly be. Other times, I want to cut the grass short and lob off the tops of visible thistles before calling it good. I can be too content with the appearance and not too concerned with what roots are forming or what habits are developing.

It seems like I’m impatient with myself, too.

Years ago, I remember talking to a priest about a hobby I wanted to pick up but how I wanted to just be good at it and not go through the frustrating process of growth. He laughed at me at the time yet I still find myself coming back frequently to this desire to just be good at the thing I want to do. Like many other humans, I want to not be subject to the difficulties of learning something new, of trying and failing, of working hard to do something at a mediocre level that others can do with ease and zero training.

Instead, I want to be good immediately.

While I might be quick to criticize the instant gratification element of our culture, I should also be quick to find this tendency in myself and to work on eliminating it. I planted a garden this summer and found myself looking out the window to survey the garden beds only hours after I tucked the seeds under the dark soil. Rationally, I knew that I wouldn’t see anything different. Yet this excited, irrational part of me wanted to see bits of green peeping out of the dirt, growing into full-blown plants as I watched.

Instead, I must wait as it seems like no progress is occurring. I cannot (successfully) burrow beneath the soil and get a status update. I must wait and water (something I’ve been kind of failing at) and hope for the seeds to bring forth life.

Over time, a few of the beds started to have a great of green growing in them. ‘Weed or intended plant?’ I kept asking myself. It was growth, but was it the kind of growth I desired? So I got an app and started taking photos of what seemed to be flourishing and which I suspected was a weed. The free app didn’t want to tell me if it was a weed or plant without a little money, but it told me the name of the vegetation and it seemed safe to assume that ‘pigweed’ is rarely a desired plant. Out goes the pigweed to create more space for the zinnias and nasturtium to spread.

Patience is more than just waiting and yielding. If I simply wait for my garden, I might have a lot of growth but not of the sort that I desire. The weeds can grow in abundance if I sit back and let nature take care of itself entirely. Instead, there is a gentle pruning that needs to happen. Is this good for me or not? Before I can make progress, I need to identify the fruit in my heart and then see if it is good or bad fruit. When encountering thistles in my yard or in my heart, I need to be patient, wriggling them free with slow intentionality. It is tempting to implement a quick fix, but then the same problem will reoccur over and over again. The slow, painful uprooting will create genuine space for goodness to flourish instead of just the appearance of a tidy surface. This, however, takes a patience which ebbs and flows within me.

A simple question from an inmate led to a great deal of pondering and considering. It is always good when the Lord uses people to unexpectedly prick our conscience or to invite us to consider reality a bit more deeply.

Perhaps this can lead to both you and me growing in patience and a good flourishing of our hearts.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash