A MINI BOOK REVIEW - PART 1

I recently came across a book that I'm appreciating reading. It's called The Parent You Want To Be by Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott. Included in this book are ten parenting traits worth considering. Tonight I'm reading the chapter on patience - being a patient parent.

As I read the box with the definition of patient, I couldn't help but relate this word to being a patient waiting parent. Here's a quote from the book:

The term patient emphasizes calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay. But it involves more. It's a kind of good-natured forbearance. It's uncomplaining endurance.

If you boil patience down to its essence, it is the loving response to frustration. Think about it. Frustration tests our patience threshold.

Patience "suffers long" because it resists the impulse to let irritation get the better of us. The word patience is related to patient - a person who is suffering. The Latin origins of the word reveal that a patient is someone who "bears affliction with calmness." But you don't need to have a medical condition to do that. Every patient parent on the planet suffers long or "bears affliction with calmness" on a routine basis.

Tolerate delay? Good-natured forbearance? Uncomplaining endurance? Suffers long? Hmmmmm ..... I can relate to these. So can many others. There are days when I am able to tolerate, forbear, endure and suffer through this wait with grace, and many, I must confess, that are done rather ungracefully. And even others yet that are done rather numbly. But we will continue to tolerate, forbear, endure and suffer through this wait for Malia because we know without a single doubt that she is worth it.

Patience is a virtue - so the saying goes - and virtues are learned, and learning takes practice ... and we've had a lot of practice "patiently" waiting! But we will take what we have learned and hopefully become wiser and stronger - and dare I say better - parents because of what we've learned about the trait of patience during this wait. And somehow (only by the grace of God, I do realize) we will hopefully resist the impulse to let the irritation of this wait get the better of us.

Anyway, thank you for patiently reading this wordy post.