Impatience

My dear friend Lindsey, about whom I’ve previously written, yesterday shared on her blog a passage from Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest and author of many books on spiritual life. Just before reading it, I was thinking about how to express the next phase of this story which is all about grappling with patience. Of course, there are no true coincidences, and I had to insert his words here:

"Patience is not a waiting passivity until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else."

Even though this message might just be the most singular theme in my process of living from the inside out, I wouldn’t have believed these words nine years ago on Dempster Street however true they were. My middle name was Impatience.