Who Needs Patience

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

AS A MOMMA WITH TWO IN MIDDLE SCHOOL and one in elementary, I have this habit of rushing through life. I overschedule myself; I overestimate what I can accomplish, and as a result, I often find myself overwhelmed and overtired. I feel like I can rest only when everything is done. So I scurry through my days, constantly feeling behind, expecting my family to experience the same sense of continual urgency, and frustrated when those I love take “extra” from my already overextended schedule.

Don’t they know I don’t have time for trivial sibling fights? Doesn’t my husband see that I don’t have time for this last-minute event he has added to our family calendar? Doesn’t the world get that I’m already spread thin and could snap at any second?

Listen, I fully understand that you might not relate to these sentiments in this season of your life. Perhaps you have strong boundaries around your time and take great care to protect your heart’s emotional health. But can you pull from your memory a time when you found yourself lacking patience? Can you recall the desire to be the calm, centered, compassionate momma when what you felt instead was the confusion and chaos of a cluttered calendar and heart?

My friend, many seasons of life require us to offer patience to those we love and live alongside. There are situations in motherhood and outside the four walls of our home in which we must draw from the patient part of our hearts. But the apostle Paul reminds us of an important truth concerning this attribute: “The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Patience is a fruit of God’s Spirit at work in our lives, and that means it is grown by pressing into our relationship with Him. Patience is a by-product of spending time listening to Jesus’s heart and following His Spirit. When we allow Him to have access to those rushed places in our lives, when we invite Him to come close and rearrange our priorities, when we yield to His ways and not to the hurry of our own plans, He reminds us of what we likely knew all along: “Be patient” isn’t something we can just add to our to-do list; it requires us to rely on Jesus and invite Him into even the most ordinary parts of our day.

Tonight we pray for the momma who needs patience. Lord, it’s all just too much right now. She is trying to be kind and loving and understanding, but she is finding herself needing a break or a breath or just a pause to regather herself. She knows her family needs peace. She knows there is stress in her home, and she wants to respond kindly and calmly. Help her have patience with herself and her family. Give her an extra measure of grace.

We ask in Jesus’s name, amen.

Holy Spirit, help me to reflect Your patience toward me when it comes to . . .