30 Day Mom Challenge Day 20: Today’s Focus: Patience.
I’ve been known to jokingly say: “patience is a virtue; and I’m not known for my virtues.” I laugh, but it’s true. Patience is not really my thing. But it is something that I’m learning to manage.
Sometimes there is more to the story. A lack of patience may mean that you take on too much (“oh never mind; I’ll do it myself”) and may stretch yourself too thin. That you can’t enjoy the here and now (“we’re almost there! <beep-beep> Outta my way!”), spending time and energy waiting for the next moment, the next thing that’s coming.
And when you have kids and you don’t have patience, you run the risk of wishing it away. You may remember fondly when your baby was truly a baby, but do you remember how you spent those days? I myself know that I wished too much time away. I wish she would go to sleep! I can’t wait until he can sit up by himself! Ugh, is he still teething? How long is this potty training going to last?
Any of that sound familiar? Especially during difficult moments, it can be so easy to avoid living in the moment, but that’s probably also the time when we should most stay in the moment, to find the silver lining in the stormy cloud of the day, to find the lesson and connection.
I even tell my kids when they’re starting to spin up—find your patience—in an effort to calm them down, get them to focus on the moment. Oh, the irony.
But I try!
