Oh dear Lord give me patience today!!
I stopped mid-task with my silent prayer offered in a paused moment of sheer frustration. My favorite prayer it seemed, this petition for patience. How many times had I found myself ready to explode and stopped to quickly utter this prayer to the sky before I ran away from home for good?
I was noticing a funny thing about the circumstances surrounding my favored prayer. They never changed.
I found myself pondering this as my three year old repeated the same phrase in a sing-song tone over and over in my right ear while I wrangled the wet swimsuit off her wiggling body. She was done swimming it seems and I wondered why I was even surprised. She had begged to swim 20 minutes prior, but now was eager for snacks and cartoons inside. Her repetitively, annoying chatter stuck in my brain as stubbornly as the pasted-on pink, polka-dot swimsuit stuck to her body.
It was only noon and I had already swept the floor three times. As I looked down at my child’s wet feet covered with grass, dirt, and dead leaves, and the trail they left mixed with puddles of pool water, I wondered why I bothered. Where was that patience I had been praying for I wondered. Was it pointless?!
We do that don’t we? Please tell me I’m not the only one. I pray for God to intercede in my life and wait with bated breath for Him to change things for me, to change my circumstances so my prayer can be answered. I don’t always mean to do it, but I do.
I pray for patience with my children, and as they continue to act like children I wonder what happened to my prayer. It’s as if I’m expecting God to change what’s going on around me when in reality He’s trying to change me. In fact, He has to change me. That’s the only way to receive an answer to my prayer, but I conveniently forget that fact.
It’s much easier to desire change if you’re not personally uprooted. It’s more comfortable to hope for a change in your circumstances, even as you know deep down that the problem is with you.
I was reminded of a past struggle with fear. A few years ago I returned to my roots in nursing of critical care. I had started my career there, but took a hiatus from the fast pace after my mother passed away. I worked as a hospice nurse for a number of years, and when I found myself back at the bedside in a critical care unit, I was reminded of the vast differences in the two jobs. To say I was filled with trepidation was an understatement. It wasn’t like riding a bike at all. In fact, those first few months I felt like I needed training wheels again.
I found myself afraid. I didn’t want to feel that way, and felt foolish at my own anxiety, but there it was nonetheless. I was afraid I was going to miss something or mess up. I was a bit of a wreck. I lacked confidence in my abilities, and wondered if maybe I just wasn’t cut out for that area after all.
I began to pray in earnest. I was discontent and needed the Lord’s help. I needed a change! I knew my fear was irrational and that God’s intervention was needed or I might just have a nervous breakdown. At the very least I would end up hating my job, and I didn’t want that.
As I prayed God brought a verse to my mind and I began to repeat it to myself. It became my personal motto in my morning shower.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I was able to realize that God needed to change me. I was in the job where He wanted me at the time for my family. I knew it was so. But I also knew that to continue the course and not go insane, a change was warranted.
God wasn’t going to change my unit. It needed to be as it was. Straight-up, flat-out crazy. That’s just the way it had to be. It needed to be intense, fast-paced, and serious. It was the nature of the beast. I needed to accept that and be courageous. I needed to get back my confidence and realize that even if I felt like I was lacking, God was not. He had placed me where He had, and He would provide me with what I needed to continue, and be happy.
I could do all things through His strength. I could change with the aid of His Holy Spirit. He could rid me of fear and fill me with joy. And He did.
Sometimes I forget that change most often starts with me. He initiates it all, but it needs to occur in me. When you pray fervently for something to change in your life it usually starts within you, then it can flow from there. Your circumstances cannot change unless you do so first.
When you can stop focusing on the problems, chaos, worries, or fears around you and instead look at yourself and what role you can play to illicit change, then you’ll notice a difference taking place. This is because even if you’re too weak to change, He is not. As you release control to Him and honestly seek His changing of your life, He is faithful to answer.
I’m still working on this. I’m not the person I desire to be, but I’m not the person I once was either. I don’t have guilt over this. I just have hope for the future.