Yesterday I talked about trust, which sort of goes along with what I want to talk about today: Patience. What is patience? Is it simply being tolerable in a situation or waiting quietly? No. I think that to me, as a Christian, patience is more than that. God really needed to drill this one into my head this summer. I needed to realize that I was here for a reason, yes, but I may not know that reason right now. I might not know until several weeks later, five or ten years down the road; I may never know. That’s frustrating for me to grasp.

 For those of you who know me, I like to know everything. I like to have a plan for my life; how well I actually stick to it sometimes, is debatable, but at least I have a plan. You can go through my planner and every day is filled up with little notes and I have little to-do lists all over my office and at home. It’s crazy how much I like to know every little thing that is going to happen in my day. I can’t even be patient when it comes to school; I like to know what grade I got on a paper almost as soon as I turn it in and if I don’t get it back for weeks it kills me! I just like to see my results immediately.

 That and there is where my problem lies. I like quick results for my hard work. Being here in Africa has been my hard work, so what are my results? Yeah, I learned things, but is that the real reason I’m here? You could have left me in America and I’m sure I would have learned things there. I know there’s more to my stay here, but I don’t know it yet. It’s hard hearing from God “you don’t need to know yet.” That was part of my problem in the beginning too…I couldn’t see the effects of my being here so I didn’t think it mattered. I couldn’t, and still can’t, really see how my work was helping bring people to Christ. I couldn’t see any monumental incident happening in my life. I just didn’t know what was so special about me being HERE as opposed to anywhere else in the world.

Patience is a hard thing to learn or know or remember. I still have to convince myself that it’s OKAY that I don’t know the exact reason I’m here. Maybe there really is no exact reason. Maybe it is just a bunch of little things; including what I’m sharing. And here’s the hardest part: Maybe I’m not even here for me. Maybe I’m here because of someone else. Maybe someone I’ve met here needed me. What if God was using me to touch someone else’s life?

So maybe I’ll figure it out someday or maybe I never will. Either way, I can’t dwell on it. I need to just relax and let God do his work. He’ll show me what he wants to show me in his time. Just like everything else happens. Patience is a weird thing, but no matter how much I plan, or how much I know, nothing will happen the when I want it to. I just need to have patience and take a back seat.