#5- To the tune of "Little by little in Every Day..."

So how do you become more patient?

Let me tell you how you don't first...

You don't react in the flesh.
You don't assume you know anything about the situation.
You don't get emotionally involved beyond the situation.
You don't act in ways that you have to apologize for later.

Tonight. 2 stories. One with apologies, one without.

#1-Micah is at swim practice and he comes to me upset. Visually upset, which eventually turns to tears. Everything in me wanted to do 2 things. #1-Take my ball and go home. #2-Tell of the stupid teenager coach who I have never liked. She yells. She doesn't understand Micah's personality. She tells him he is the problem when I know he isn't. I talk to Micah. I talk to her. I seek understanding. Check box #1...not reacting and instead finding out what the situation is. That my friends is patience. No apologies, I reacted in kindness and patience and Micah ended with swimming a 50 and on the up. I will talk to the head coach tomorrow so that I can bring some resolution to all that happened.

#2-I'm on the phone talking to my dad. Boys are starting to make lunches. All heck breaks loose. They are massively screwing around and Aidan throws Micah's lunchbox and I get ticked. I start yelling from upstairs. Then I come down and find out Aidan is mimicking me under his breath. So I react. I try to get his attention and turn him towards me and he gets more frustrated. I get more frustrated. And by this time something so small has turned into an emotional disaster. Why? Because I reacted in the flesh.  I assumed the worst out of him. I assumed he wanted to be silly to frustrate and upset me and disobey. Really he just was responding out of immaturity. The same thing that I responded to an hour earlier like a rockstar. Not this time. We made the best of it and he said he was overtired and wanted to go to bed. I think truly that was the heart of it all along. He was tired. I was still frustrated from swim practice and responded to that.

Bit by bit. You become.

And then tonight I tucked my overtired son in and sang him a song from when I was a kid with the words, "He's changing me...my precious Jesus...I'm not the same person that I used to be...it's been slow going but now I'm knowing that someday perfect I will be. Little by little in every day...little by little in every way...He's changing me. He's changing me..."

For real. Those were the words that came to me tonight. And for real He's changing me. I might apologize through it. But I'm thankful that His spirit is working in me. His spirit is helping me become more of not only who I want to be but who He created me to be. A loving, patient, and real person.