A Prayer for Patience

The Lord is kind and compassionate.  Slow to anger and abounding in love. Psalm 103:8

The past few days my bible study has focused on patience.  The actual wording in the book is that patience is the premiere expression of love.  I have never really thought of patience being the premiere.  I guess I always put other things as more important...grace, forgiveness, selflessness.  But after really thinking about it patience encompasses all of these.  When you are patient with someone aren't you showing them grace, mercy, compassion, kindness?  And showing them these things at a time when they are often not at their best.  I have always been hesitant to pray for patience.  Mainly because I don't want God to provide me situations in which patience is required. But I decided that I should pray for patience and sit back and let God help me.  Day 1 of praying for patience was going pretty well, until nap time that is.  Noah decided to forgo his regular 2 hour nap and instead took a 30 minute nap waking up screaming at the top of his lungs.  He continued to scream, whine, cry, and throw temper tantrums for 3 1/2 hours until Dan came home and then he was a perfect little angel.  I did every possible thing I could think of to entertain him: playing outside, setting up our tent in his bedroom, playing hide-and-go-seek, coloring on the marker board, cutting with scissors, gluing.  All of these things worked for about 5 minutes and then the screaming continued.  After he had slammed Luke to the ground for about the 3rd time I said a small prayer to God asking for help and then let Noah watch the Polar Express.  Day 2 of praying for patience.  My sweet baby Luke who is always so even tempered and well behaved decided to cry the entire morning!!  I was frantic....What?  Where did this come from?  He got a great night sleep, slept past 7:00 a.m..  He ate a good breakfast, why was he crying so much?  Oh yeah, I prayed for patience!!!  After blow drying my hair while holding Luke and finally getting out the door this morning, he calmed down.  Our quiet time lasted 5 minutes into the car ride when Noah saw that Luke had his blankey with him and Noah did not have his.  He was screaming so loudly and crying so hard I literally wanted to crash the car into a tree just so that he would stop.  Instead I rolled down the window.  This calmed him down and after a couple of minutes I rolled it back up and the screaming started again.  We rode the whole way with the window down.....it was 28 degrees outside.

I am now sitting in my bed while both boys nap, so at least the day has gotten better!  I am going to continue to pray for patience because look at how patient God is with me!  I can be selfish, I get wrapped up in the world and forget about God, I grumble and complain instead of rejoicing and giving thanks.  But He is always there with open arms because The Lord is kind and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love....aka patient.