The next thing God gave me to work on was patience (I had none).
Here's an example of how it worked: Some little old lady would hurry to get in front of me in line at the grocery store, only to pull out her checkbook and a stack of coupons. I would lose my patience and publicly berate the woman for her idiotic behavior. Of course, this led to a confrontation, which in turn, led to days of internal dialogue, stewing over "what I should have said/done" to that inconsiderate old bag.
Impatience led to anger which led to acting out which led to an unnecessary amount of mental energy committed to an extremely minor incident.
This scenario extended beyond grocery store lines... It happened with the guy who cut me off on the road, the woman who stole my parking spot, the Karen who confronted me at the gas station... in other words, anyone who got in my way.
I found I was angry ALL the time.
That's when I decided to pray for patience. As I've mentioned before, God doesn't grant patiences, he teaches it by sending people to test our patience... and BOY did he!
And it worked. I began to make a concerted effort to stop and take a breath before reacting. I started waving people over into my lane, I started allowing little old ladies the grace to be little old ladies, checkbooks and all.
Do you know what happened? My anger subsided and my happiness grew.
To be transparent... I'm far from perfect. I still slip every now and again and let a finger fly on the freeway, but for the most part I'm now a much more calm and content person with a clearer mind, free to focus on the positive things in my life, rather than the negative.
Funny how that works.
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