The Reward of Patience

The reward of patience is patience. (St. Francis of Assissi)

The first time I read that, it didn't make sense to me, but after some thought, I realized that having patience can be a very great gift and goes a long way in preserving one's sanity and hope.

Benjamin Franklin once said that "he (or she) who can have patience can have what he (she) will." It is true that we do not always get what we want in life but if we can be patient and continue to hope, sometimes good things really do come to those who wait.

Remember the character Tom Hanks played in "Castaway." He nearly gave up, even tried to kill himself after being stranded all alone on a desert island, sole survivor of a plane crash in the Pacific. But when the branch on which he was going to hang himself fell into the ocean below after he tried to test a weight on it, he resigned himself to life and, lo and behold, one day the tide brought a piece of vinyl, part of the plane that crashed, which he used as a sail on his log raft to get him over the reef and out into the open ocean where he was eventually found by a passing freighter. Don't give up hope because you never know what the tide will bring in, or, in other words, one day the tide will turn in your favor, or your ship will come in, or, like the man on the island, even a piece of wreckage from your past may turn out to be the very thing that saves you.

Samuel Johnson once said, "That which is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity." Some things take a long time to develop or they may take a lot of self-preparation in order for us to be ready for the good things ahead ("I will study and prepare myself, and the opportunity will come" Abraham Lincoln, or "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going," said Beverly Sills.)

I realized I was making the same mistakes over and over again. The problem was not outside of me, but within me, so I decided to change the whole pattern of my existence. I still had my twins to raise and I had to work to take care of them and our house, but I also determined that I had to better myself. I attended college on grants and student loans, and finally got a decent, honorable job as a writer and then as a county employee. Best of all, I prepared myself for a special man by living a quiet and virtuous life alone with my children. I learned who I was and of what things I was capable, and I learned self-control and patience. I now have a good and kind man who loves me, who found me again after being apart from me for 37 years.

It is true good things come to those who wait, but also to those who are patient and pray for such blessings. Thank-you, God and Philip, for all the joy now in my life.