Have patience, have patience, don't be in such a hurry.

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success. - Bryan Adams 

I need to hang this on every wall, mirror, bulletin board, door, etc. in my house. We all have our faults, and this happens to be one of mine. I struggle with patience on a daily basis, whether it be with students, my child, slow drivers, friends, my job, and especially in my personal life. I often wonder if I was raised in a home where I was instantly gratified, thus leading to my incessant need for things to happen now. I don't remember my mother falling into this trap of giving me whatever I wanted as soon as I asked for it, so this lack of patience must have slowly progressed over the years. 


My impatience has not only bred anxiety numerous times, fear, and even failure, it also has bred insecurities. The correlation between the two is somewhat of a stretch, but wanting something to happen and being forced to wait for that something to happen only increases the impatience. The longer the wait, the greater the impatience. And it's only when the outcome I had hoped for, the scenario I formulated and played out in my mind, doesn't come to fruition, the insecurity and fear appears. Therefore questioning myself: What did I do wrong? Am I not good enough? What don't I have that the other person has? Asking those kinds of questions is bound to breed insecurities in the future. 


I must have been patient at some point in my life or I wouldn't have the blessings that I have in my life, but what about those things I don't have yet that I so desperately want? Is my impatience and borderline desperation for them preventing them from happening or me getting what I want? 

Be patient and it will happen. Be patient and things will fall in to place. How many times have I said this to myself, read this, or listened to someone utter this to me, yet struggle to believe and internalize it? Too many times.

Forgive and Forget

I'm going to begin with a quote that I stumbled across while reading a book I assigned for my English class: 

"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, 'I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die,' a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin." 

How true this statement is. Why is forgiveness so hard? We have all been wronged in our lives. We have all had that friend, that boyfriend/girlfriend, that husband/wife, or whoever it is who has done something hurtful to us, so hurtful that we think forgiveness is not an option, let alone forgetting. 

What exactly is the meaning of the word "forgiveness?" Well, like my students would probably tell me if I asked them to look it up, "it's the act of forgiving." Ok, well, thank you for that helpful clarification, but that tells me nothing. So what is the denotation of the word "forgive?" According to the dictionary, forgive means to grant pardon or remission of; to cease to feel resentment against. The word pardon reminds me of prisoners or criminals who are granted a pardon for the crime they committed. Does this mean they are forgiven of the crime they committed? And the word "resentment." It harbors such a negative connotation. To cease to feel resentment against. I like that definition a little better than the first. But still the question remains, why is it so hard to cease to feel resentment against others? Is it because of the severity of the crime they committed against us? Is it a pride issue? In the words of TLC, "I ain't too proud to beg." But when it comes to asking forgiveness or even forgiving someone who has wronged us, many people are, in fact, too proud to beg for forgiveness and/or forgive that person who wronged them. The Bible tells us to "forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." (Collosians 3:13) I will be the first to admit, mainly because this is my blog, that it has been hard to forgive those who have hurt me in the past. In fact, there are remain a few out there whom I have to yet to forgive. Does this make me a bad person? Does this mean I never will forgive these people? No, it just means that my heart is not ready and healed in order to be in a place of forgiveness. But as far as choosing death over forgiveness, I am not quite ready to choose my coffin. 

To forget about the betrayal or the lies or the dishonesty or whatever it is, is a conscious act. One has to be consciously aware of the incident in order to be able to forget it, right? But does forgiveness require the same concerted conscious effort? Must one concentrate on the incident that requires the forgiveness, or does this act of forgiving live somewhere else? To me, forgiveness is an emotional act that is lead by the heart. The heart knows when it's time to forgive, whereas the head knows when it's time to forget. I may have "forgotten" what he or she did to me, but my heart has not given consent for forgiveness of the wrongdoing. So again I ask, does this make me a bad person since I have yet to forgive someone for what they did and said to me so many years ago? 

So I go back to the question - why is forgiveness that hard? 

And like I would tell my kids - I don't know is not an answer. 

Holding on a little too long...

Things I have held on for too long that need released: 

• the title of this blog
• clothes in my closet that I haven't worn in months
• the obscene amount of purses and sweatshirts taking up space in my closet
• the hope that things will come to me without me working for them 
• the notion that Mr. Right will miraculously show up at my doorstep with a dozen roses 
• my life will not turn out like a Tyler Perry movie
• five t-shirts from each drawer in my dressers 
• temporary feelings that aren't really temporary 
• people who have done me wrong yet remain in my life