“Self-love
is the key to patience, persistence and success.” ~Unknown
I’ve been wrestling with the reality of patience vs.
impatience for many years – with healthy signs that I’m making progress. But I still experience times like the
following situation, when I wish with all my heart that I had stopped and asked
myself: If I really loved me, what would
I do right now?
After grocery shopping for an hour, I arrived home
with a trunk full of bags to unload by myself, and the awareness that I would
have to put them all away. I was tired,
my patience exhausted, and all I wanted was to get this chore over with and sit
down to relax. I grabbed two of the last
four bags in each hand, noticing that the ones in my right hand each contained
a half gallon of milk. I didn’t think
about those heavy bags, just that if I could close the trunk of my car right
then, I wouldn’t have to come back out to the garage to do it.
Reaching for the trunk lid, I swung my right arm up
above my head, attempting a Michael Jordan slam dunk, grabbed the lid and
pushed down. But it took more strength
than I had with the weight of the milk containers and I knew as soon as the lid
slammed shut that I had hurt my shoulder.
By the next day, the pain had not abated so I sought medical help. I had a moderate injury to my rotator cuff
that would not require surgery, but would take time to heal, and I would have
to limit the use of my right arm, including not being able to drive for a
while.
Why was I in such a hurry that I abandoned good
sense, acted without thought and chose to do something that would compromise my
well-being? If I had taken a moment to
think, had a moment’s patience, I would have realized that what I was doing was
not only risky but unnecessary. Surely I
had already had enough not-so-good experiences with impatience in my long
lifetime to learn this lesson. I can
remember as a child my great-grandmother, Amanda Hampton Crownover, would wag
her pointer finger at me and say, “Act in haste, repent at leisure.” Was I
ever! Ouch!
Yet, when an issue, such as patience, or the lack of
it, sticks in my consciousness, and won’t go away, I know it’s an indication
that it’s way past time to focus on this lesson. My modus operandi is to turn within and
realize any insights, apply them in my life to assist me on my spiritual
journey, and to share them with other interested souls who also seek to know
how life on Earth is meant to work.
As the thoughts began to gather around the current
issue – my lack of patience – I recalled that in at least three instances over
the past few years, my impatience resulted in some totally unnecessary, minor –
yet painful and inconvenient – health challenges. Many seniors would just chalk those
experiences up to aging and let it go at that.
Not me. I want truth.
When I asked my inner guidance what I’m to learn
from these situations, I was told that if I want to continue experiencing life
on Earth, I have to take better care of the sacred vehicle (body) that allows
me to do so. As usual, part of that
aspect had to do with getting the maximum nutritional value from the foods I
ingest, and also exercising a little every day to keep all the organs
functioning at an optimal level. I’m seriously
working on each of these.
But the most important – as well as the most
surprising, and vital bit of information – was that I needed to face, heal and
release the mental and emotional aspects of me that cause the impatience. In other words, the major insight in this
specific situation turned out to be that I evidently had much more inner work
to do on loving myself.
Actually, I honestly thought that after all the
years of daily inner work I’ve done to heal and release the childhood feelings
of being undeserving, unworthy and unlovable, that I was now nearly “home
free.” Not so. Evidently I still have layers of undesirable
energies that if I want to keep moving forward on the spiritual path, need to
be acknowledged and worked with until they too are in alignment with what is
for my highest and best good.
As I began the process of plumbing the depths of me
to discover insights about my impatience, naturally the first thing I thought
of was what I, and perhaps others, consider the real-world definition of patience. It goes something like this: Patience means gritting our teeth, digging in
our heels and putting up with some undesirable and negative condition, person
or situation.
Now I know that while some of this may be true, it’s
obvious that there’s a lot more to the full meaning of patience than most of us
realize.
After several days of soul-searching and no instant
insights, I realized that the only way I was going to make any progress was by
going within and looking at my own life.
The first thing that popped up was the fact that when I answered God’s
call to be a Spiritual Warrior of the Heart more than twelve years ago, it took
not only great daily patience but also long-term persistence (and faith) to
stay on my spiritual path. It wasn’t and
still isn’t always easy to stay strong and face the challenges and blockages
that pop up from the core of my being.
More often than not, it was extremely humbling. But the patience and persistence I have
managed to gain continue to help me stay lovingly present and conscious of what
is happening on my spiritual path so I can open to the insights and fulfill my
purpose by sharing them to help others on their life journeys.
As to my inner work, after going within and
releasing any negative feelings about my periodic “attacks” of impatience, I
released any unloving feelings about myself.
At that point, I got it that
patience in its true fullness means first and foremost that we are to be
patient with ourselves. This also means
being compassionate, and forgiving, and loving ourselves at every opportunity,
because we are all works-in-progress, and we deserve all the help we can get.
What I believe we all need to remember is that we
have our human aspect and our Godly side.
While we are human and can choose to express anger, fear, impatience and
jealousy, we also have and can express the God-qualities of compassion, caring,
joy, love, patience and persistence. I
consider myself reminded Big Time that patience means being loving to me
first. This opens up the opportunity to
give any decision the time it needs before I abandon loving myself and act
impatiently.
The other insight I gained was that when we can grow
into having patience with ourselves and the process of life – whether or not
we’re committed to a spiritual path or just want to create a better life – we
will automatically realize that self-love
is a vital part of our truth and that it requires daily practice. Actually our universal life mission is to
truly love ourselves. It’s been said
throughout eons of time that before we can love another we have to love ourselves.
Oh, BTW, if I had had the patience in my garage to
put those heavy things down and to ask myself the question: “What would be the
loving thing to do?” The answer would
have been that a truly self-loving person would never consciously choose to
risk injury just to save a few moments of time.
Knowing what I know now, I choose to strengthen my self-love, and to
claim that patience and persistence guide my life. I can hear my beloved great-grandmother
saying: “Finally, better late than never.”
I
daily claim and practice self-love, patience and persistence.
With
patience I hold on, hold fast and hold out for the best life has to offer.
___________________________________
Copyright © 2014 by Fern Stewart Welch
The author’s books: “Becoming a Spiritual Warrior of
the Heart, (April 2013); “Tea with Elisabeth,” recipient of the 2010 Silver
Award for Non-fiction; “You Can Live A
Balanced Life In An Unbalanced World,” (Nov. 2008); and “The Heart Knows the
Way – How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit
Within,” (Feb. 2008), are available at Amazon.com, other online booksellers, as
well as bookstore chains such as Barnes & Noble.
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