Patience is a virtue...

...and I'm not sure I have it. I always used to think I was a patient person. And, generally, I am very patient in situations, especially crisis or challenging ones. I can keep a cool head and keep perspective, but more and more I am finding patience simply isn't a virtue I possess. You may have read about the car situation, and since then I have decided to go ahead with a trade-in deal and buy the nissan. I shopped around a bit, but really, the day after I got my car back, I was ready to trade it in and get the new one. JP encouraged me to slow down, he seemed to think I was being a bit impetuous. I tried going with a contact of his, which meant waiting 5 days even to talk to him, and then it has been a few more days of calls and thinking through things. The initial excitement faded and it became a numbers game. Crunching numbers has been a strength since I was in 3rd grade, yet somehow when you convert it into buying something worth more than $15,000 it becomes incredibly complex....mostly I think because my mind simply has trouble fathoming spending all that money in one place. I'm someone who tends to "know what she wants and then gets it". So not getting what I want, or not knowing what I want becomes incredibly taxing. I have a number of things/situations/opportunities in life right now that I am waiting on. One thing after another seems to be waylaid and it's enough to make me crazy! (If I had been an Israelite wandering in the desert, I probably wouldn't have made it a year in search of the promised land, let alone 40).

Thinking about it this afternoon I thought, "If I can't wait 2 weeks for a new car, what on earth is it going to be like when I have to wait 9 months for a baby?!?!?" Never mind the physical burden, pain, or weight, the "delayed gratification" (as my mother would put it) would be cause for crazy making. I thought further and wondered about my degrees--those took time to earn...but that's just it....I earned them...I didn't simply have to wait for them, I was actively going after them--taking classes, reading, writing papers--it was a constant blur of busyness--studying, doing, learning. No simple waiting. Almost always active doing. Thus I find I have been ill-prepared for true patience, patience that involves long-term waiting for things further off in the distance than 2 weeks, a semester, or even a 4-year degree.

Now the question becomes how to get rid of this sense of *antsy* long enough to focus on something else--anything else, the many other things that are left to do in the meantime.