Patience and Forgiveness: A Writer's Path

During my junior year in High School, we were required to see a guidance counselor. We had two of the best. She was a former nun. He had dropped out of the monastery. She was six feet tall. He didn't break five feet. They were married. True story.

I got the ex-nun. And she was fabulous. 

I don't remember much of what we talked about. I didn't have a lot of issues. Good grades. Varsity sports. Generally got along with it all. 

What I do remember well is her opening the door to her office and beaming at me "Mr. Patience!". The kid who had the slot before me did have a lot of issues, so she ran late with him a lot. I was glad to give the time. I liked her a lot and valued our conversations, but the kid before me needed her more. And I could tell she liked serving others. She was really in it for the right reasons. 

I also didn't mind waiting because this was a required session, and at least I wasn't sitting bored in class or in the pool tortured by water polo workouts, where we were regularly required to carry two gallon milk jugs filled with water over our heads while we used only our legs to go from one side of the pool to the other. Also true story. Yeah, I'll sit her and wait outside your office door all day, thank you very much.

The thing was, with just about everything else in my life I was the epitome of impatient. Nothing happened fast enough. Nothing went the way I expected it. I wanted to be in control, and I wasn't.

That feeling persists to this day. I fight with it constantly. Well, actually, no, I don't. Not anymore.

Something's been happening lately that in many ways seems inexplicable. I've been surrendering more. Letting go. Realizing how little we control, if anything, in the exterior world.

Yet, I've turned a little too inward. 

My impatience comes to the surface with a vengeance. And yet, I can see I've made enormous progress. The more I get out of my own way, the more I allow things to happen rather than trying to make things happen, the more I seem to get done, and the happier I am.

Writing is the big one. I'm writing more this year and more consistently than I ever have. The commitment to the daily practice hasn't seemed hard. I realized this is something I always wanted to do; have always been called to do. But I chased it hard, but it was elusive, impossible to catch. Only smoke lingering around my fingers.

As I set about on my journey on this early Monday morning, I see how different I was sitting on the repurposed church pew outside that counselor's office, finding patience in the absence of any responsibility to be there -- I simply went because it was required.

Something else seems to be holding me accountable here, requiring this practice, and thereby relieving me of the responsibility in some way. I simply show up because I'm required to, and it's by far a more pleasurable experience than the other ways I could spend my time right now -- jumping into client work, or laying awake in bed trying to grasp at another hour's of sleep. 

It is easy to be pulled back into those lesser habits. A skeleton key to break them, for me, has been forgiveness. When I forgive myself of those past transgressions, the freedom to make a different choice now opens up. Patience returns. Patience for myself first. Patience for others on its heels.