Stop Praying for Patience!!!

(Well Worth The Read)

~If you are anything like me, you have prayed for patience.... several times, only to discover that a prayer like that will only test your wits to no end, and before long you will find yourself pulling out your hair and screaming, "I didn't pray for things to get harder."

~A few months ago I was giving a lesson in Relief Society and the topic of patience came up and I mentioned how I have prayed for patience several times and the frustrating results to these prayers. Especially with Jacob, he is normally a very patient person, and it takes a lot for him to get frustrated. But with his eye condition he has become increasingly impatient and easily frustrated, as I can only imagine it must be extremely frustrating to ever so slowly lose your eye sight. Oddly, as I tell him to be patient, I grow more and more impatient with his impatience and then I pray for patience (for it only to get much worse) and thus the cycle goes. Then I found myself pregnant (with the twins), beyond exhausted, and super sick. As the pregnancy progressed everything got much, much harder and I found myself in the same boat as Jacob, getting very impatient and very frustrated with myself and him in turn getting impatient with me. I'd pray for patience and of course it just would get harder.

~After the lesson, a sweet sister came up to me and she told me to stop praying for patience and to start praying for charity, "because patience will always fail, while charity never fails". This sister would know as she has a son my age with down-syndrome and I can only imagine how her patience has been tried and tested.

~So I stopped praying for patience and started to pray for charity, and it has changed my life! It allows me to see things in a perspective that I could never see before while I was wasting all my efforts focusing on my impatience. Charity takes the focus off my failed attempt at patience, and centers it on the perspective of the person or situation that I am dealing with, and then ample compassion follows, which allows me to work through the situation with patience.

~It took that awful pregnancy for me to realize that the reason Jacob is so impatient is because he is becoming less and less dependent upon himself to see the world around him and more and more dependent on me and my vision, just as I became more and more dependent on him to help me throughout the pregnancy, and it is much easier for me to be of assistance, rather than escalate the problem by getting frustrated with him.

~Having charity is essential with twins! As any mother knows a newborn can be sooo frustrating especially at 2 am. Try having two! With charity I have more empathy and compassion with the twins and more resolve to help them solve their problems, and this brings a calmness which in turn calms the twins.... making life sooo much more do-able. Also charity reminds me that this too will pass, and exhaustion never killed anyone.

~I can't thank that sweet sister enough for her advice, and I just wanted to share it with others: if you are being challenged and your patience is being pushed to the absolute max... pray for charity, trust me somehow it just works!