“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” (David G. Allen)
Having patience with things is probably the biggest test most of us face quite consistently throughout life. It’s something that seems to be tested on many of our days, usually in a wide variety of ways. It happens when we’re on the road sitting in traffic, it happens when we are in a line at a store, it happens when we put our name on a list at a restaurant, it happens we’re looking for a job, it happens when we see others not acting in ways we think they should be, and so on and so forth. And all too often it also seems that having patience in these situations doesn’t always translate into it working out in the way we want. Over the past few years, my own patience has been tested in dealing with my health, as it feels like it’s been an exceptionally long time that I’ve had to endure a lot of physical, mental, and emotional pain. But even more prevalent has been the harsh reality that the more I’ve worked on becoming healthier and done my best to remain patient with the process, the more it feels like my health has grown even worse. And the truth is I always thought I would slowly start feeling better the more I worked on myself. But could it truly be that the darkest of all this was left for the very end, meaning the worst has come just before the dawn of me having that far healthier-feeling life? I’m choosing to believe this is so and while this may not be the way I envisioned I’d get better over time, looking at it in this light has definitely helped to much more calmly accept today’s quote. That maybe having patience really does mean that sometimes things happen in a different order than the one we had in mind…
I pray I accept that having patience doesn’t always mean things will work out in the order I had in mind, but that eventually it will indeed work out for my greatest, highest good.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
