At times the above comic sums me up succinctly; I ask God for many a thing, including patience, and instead of waiting around on God I yell at her to hurry up the process! The thing is, as you probably know, patience is a process and it takes time to get there; both in being patient with ourselves as well as being patient with others.

My work demands quite a bit of patience given that I work with kids. One thing I’ve learned over the years with working with kids is they require a LOT of patience, but to a certain degree persistence as well. They also need to know your intentions in the matter, because it is very possible that in your patience and persistence they might think you’re doing it to be mean or that you’re coming across as being a harsh authoritarian.

I do push my students, but I know their limits through rapport built with them, and some can take on more and some can take on less, it varies (as with all of us) person to person. It helps that I work with nearly the same classroom on a daily basis, and so I am familiar in my ways and approaches with my students.

When it comes to patience in my life it’s usually in light of what is going on in my life, and while I tackled contentment the other day I need patience. Because there are times in my life I wish could be resolved in a blink of an eye, but while sometimes a lot of the time I cannot have it that way. I am still content throughout all of it, but I want it in an expedited manner. Yet life isn’t like that all that often, and sometimes it is through the trials of error we’ll figure out the reasons why, but even that is in limited supply because sometimes (as cliche as it sounds) the answer is that there is no answer.

In moments like that I am sometimes aloof, sometimes I am able to surrender to that truth, and other times I yell at God will all my might, hoping that she hears me and does something about it. And yet there are times where I hold the answer, sometimes I am the answer to my own prayers as well as others. All in all, patience needs to be carried out without having a mindset as to when will “x” come to fruition, because sometimes it comes to be and other times it doesn’t come at all and sometimes it comes in time but a time frame we might not align ourselves with.

So with all that being said, patience was my keyword on this 27th day of Ramadan. Thanks be to God, the ever patient one, may we learn to be patient with ourselves and with others.

Salaam alaikum be yours now and always,

Nathanael