“Mom, Are We There Yet?” – Ponderings on Patience
Our Chevy wagon was packed to the gills along with five of us and two dogs. I had just slowed down to enter the north bound Florida turnpike to begin our long, arduous 600-mile trek to visit family for Christmas. “Mom, are we there yet?” I can still hear her words (a common catchphrase today — not then), but I still can’t describe what I felt when I heard them. It was one of the funniest things I had ever heard, and one of the most discouraging. Hilarious because of the abject incongruity of her question asked with such pure innocence. And demoralizing because I really wished too that we were there. Twelve long hours lay ahead.
Paucity of Patience = Poor Pigeons
Sid, my close friend and camping pal, and myself were standing high up on the majestic marble steps fronting the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.. People must have looked at us curiously with our little wire box containing four big blue-colored birds. Our mission? To release the four racing homing pigeons trusting them to return to their home loft in my backyard 600 miles south. They never made it. When, weeks later, we returned home from camping in Canada my parents had received a message from Baltimore. A couple had found a tired (and lost?) pigeon walking through their yard with our Georgia address in his leg capsule. What happened? Our bad, not the pigeon’s. It never occurred to two boys just out of high school to first train these birds with many shorter flights. Conditioning takes patience — something we didn’t have.
“Voluntary” Confinement Requires (or Creates?) Patience
The room is small; four walls, no windows. You’re sitting, feet dangling, on a strip of white paper lining a table at mid-floor while staring at a cabinet covering an entire wall — its sterile surface sporting a bottle of whatever, a blood-pressure gizmo, and a container of used rubber gloves. On another wall is the image of a skeleton with its organs exposed in bright colors. To relax you (the patient) there’s a nondescript painting on an otherwise bare wall. (It doesn’t work; at least not for me.) There is, wisely, no clock. Contemplating time here is a no-no. Did I say “patient?” What an appropriate term! There are two chairs — one holding all your clothes reminding you that you’re half-naked and chilled. The other is in a corner by a computer table. That’s where the doctor sits when he or she arrives. Speaking of which you finally have hope. After what seems an interminable amount of time you hear the doctor at the door talking with a nurse. Is it about your test results? Their voices fade. Uh-oh, maybe they forgot you’re in there and they’ve gone home! Once, in an exam room that had a window (blinded) I got so “unpatient” I pulled the cord to open the blind. It all came noisily crashing down. When he finally arrived, Dr. Lum — my all-time favorite doctor — simply smiled.
Patience Defined and Demanded
The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset is a demand we meet every day in some way, shape, or form. And Whether waiting in traffic to enter a busy thoroughfare (I’ve found if you wait long enough a gap will always occur) or quarantining in a pandemic (probably no one on our planet has escaped needing Covid-enduced patience), that word wait cannot be avoided. Even in golf I remember my first instructor insisting vehemently concerning my wild swing, “Sim, wait on the club-head!!” And (I did the math) upon reaching 80 we will have spent an entire year (waking hours) waiting at a red light! As our 5G world accelerates that old adage is ever new: Hurry up and wait!
But Wait can be a Tricky word
Dr. Gutzke, my favorite seminary prof taught that wait in the Bible often went beyond the likes of waiting in a doctor’s office, it being more like his experience as a boxer in the Canadian Army — battling in the ring waiting for the bell. The words of Hebrews 12:1 comply: Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. And this: The mills of God grind slowly; yet grind exceedingly fine is an axiom reminding us God is beyond time. But he rewards us who are not: They who “wait” for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary… walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31).
Marriage and the “P” Word — (Just in time for Valentine’s Day)
“It takes a lot of time, patience, [and] work” said Zara Rutherford,19, last month, after being the youngest woman to fly solo around the world — a rarity in patience. The first two paragraphs above attest to the fact that, like wine, patience improves with age. Or with sweat: When all kinds of trials… crowd into your lives…, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come… to produce in you the quality of [Patience] (James 1:2,3 Phillips). Finally, the marriage altar — where the Bible’s love passage is most recited; I Corinthians 13 lists 15 ingredients of love. Guess what’s #1. You got it! PATIENCE! (btw I sometimes wonder if my pigeon — a lesson in patience — is still walking. If so, he’s about there now.)