Replacing Rush with Patience

 

My husband has (accurately) accused me of always looking forward to the next thing to make me happy. When we were dating, I was in a hurry to get engaged. When we were engaged, I was in a hurry to get married. When we were first married, I was in a hurry to have a baby and buy a house. Now that we have a baby and a house, I’m finding myself in a hurry to have another baby.

I’ve constantly lived with the fear of being left behind. I have been on a track in life where things have happened later for me than for my peers and friends. So I have found myself feeling like I was going to miss out on certain experiences and milestones because they weren’t happening for me when they were happening for everyone around me. No matter how many times I face this challenge, I just can’t seem to manage my own instinct to rush ahead to the end of the story.

I can distinctly remember conversations with friends where I said, “If I just knew that I was going to finally meet someone and get married, I would be fine! I don’t even need to know who it’ll be or when it’ll happen; I just want to know that it’ll happen!” I remember saying the same types of things to my husband when we were struggling with loss and infertility: “I would feel so much better if I just knew we would eventually have a baby! I just want to know that this struggle will have a happy ending.” The feeling of the unknown when it came to things that I deeply desired made me want to rush through the journey of getting there and just arrive at the end game. My happiness hinged on achieving that thing that I wanted and made the journey to get there utterly miserable because it wasn’t happening fast enough for my liking.

The problem with this mentality, as my husband points out when he makes these (accurate) accusations, is that once I get to the endgame- the engagement ring, the house, the baby- my brain starts looking for the next thing. When the newness of the milestone settles down, I start thinking about what the next milestone will be and how I can get there. Since I constantly feel like I’m playing catch up with my peers and friends, I quickly notice that I’m not getting any younger, and the longer I wait to move to the next things, the harder it will be to get there. This is especially challenging right now as we move towards having another baby.

Because of the struggles we had to conceive our Rainbow, I’m already aware of the time “lost” and the obstacles we are facing with having another baby. Since we got married in our 30s, I was already older than most when we started trying to grow our family. Our Rainbow was born two months before my 36th birthday, and I’m now looking down the barrel of 38. If we were to have a successful transfer right now, I’d be pushing 39 by the time a baby would be born- and that’s only if we plan a cycle right now and nothing goes wrong. If our first transfer fails, then push things back even further if a second transfer is successful.

Since we only have two embryos in the freezer, if both are unsuccessful, then we have some major decisions to make. Do we try another full cycle of IVF to get more embryos? That adds a significant amount of time to the plan. Do we try embryo adoptions? That takes time, too. Do we consider adoption? That process can take an indefinite amount of time, even pushing the addition of a second child into our 40s. And all of these timelines will be impacted by our finances; we will likely have times where we’ll have to wait to save up enough money to try the next option.

Even a path where an embryo transfer is successful immediately requires that future thinking that makes me feel rushed. If our next transfer works, we will have one more embryo in the freezer. If we want to try for a third child, that pregnancy and birth will be squarely in my 40s if the last embryo sticks. Is that something we want to consider? With just one embryo left, would we want to donate or would we want to try one last time? All of these decisions take time and money, and as my next birthday inches closer, it’s hard for me not to feel the pressure of the clock ticking away.

Anxiety can cause us to rush ahead, always looking forward to the next thing that will make us happy or fulfilled because we don’t want to be left behind. When we see others around us receive these things so easily, and we know how hard we have to struggle to get them, it’s hard not to feel like we have to rush in order to catch up, especially when the literal biology of procreating has a cut off where things will not work as well or at all. Patience doesn’t come naturally to most humans and for those of us who have dealt with loss and infertility, we know that having patience can feel impossible and waiting can sometimes be detrimental to the success of our efforts.

I find it very appropriate that the first time the word “patient” appears in Scripture, in Ecclesiastes, is in a section of text entitled “Wisdom.” This passage documents a lot of different pieces of wisdom that are beneficial for living a joyful life and walking in faith with God. Included among these pearls is, “The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride” (Ecclesiastes 7:8 NIV). I truly appreciate that this passage acknowledges the very real human desire to get to the end of something, that this is the better place to be! But the very next statement establishes for us that having patience in getting to that end is better than pride, which funnily enough we talked about last week. To me this indicates that our instinct to rush ahead is associated with the pride we discussed, where we think we know better than God. We think our timing is better than His, so we try to rush things to the end of the story instead of having the patience to wait for His timing.

The next verse in this passage adds, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools” (verse 9 NIV). Patience isn’t just about not rushing the timing of things, but being able to tolerate situations and people without losing our tempers. In my opinion, these things hold hands; if I’m trying to rush situations in my life, I will get irritated and lose my temper when things don’t cooperate or go at the pace I want. According to this verse, this leads to anger, another topic we’ve discussed here that I personally struggle with a lot in motherhood. If we can have patience with the timing of things in our life and the people around us, we will be much more likely to approach them with forbearance, meekness, gratitude, and other qualities we’ve explored here that will help us recapture our joy.

What cracks me up about this passage is that the next verse, verse 10, says, “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions” (NIV). Isn’t this such a human thing to do?! We rush and rush to get to the end of the story, to reach those milestones, and then we look back and say, “Remember how much better it was back then!” I had a major problem with this when we first bought our house. I had been wanting to buy a house since we got married. We had been saving money, and I had been frustrated with the slowness of that saving and the amount my husband wanted saved in order for us to actually start searching for a home. Then, as is typical of the universe, we moved into the house and immediately had a million things to fix. I clearly remember saying to my husband, “Why did we buy this house? It was so much easier to just call maintenance to fix stuff in our apartment!” Scripture is right- this truly is foolishness! If we can lock into patience instead of rushing, we will find the end of the story more enjoyable because we will know we have made the right decision instead of rushing things.

There are two definitions of the Hebrew used in Ecclesiastes 7:8 that are not surprising to me: “slow to anger, longsuffering.” These definitions are things we talked about when we looked at replacing anger with forbearance. But there’s a third definition that I found intriguing: “long (pinions).” I looked up the word “pinions” and found that it is the outer part of a bird’s wing that includes the flight feather. I don’t know a lot about birds and the aerodynamics of their wings. But I noticed a second entry in the definition that said, “cut off the pinion to prevent flight.” So this gave me the impression that this part of the bird’s wing is what really helps them get into the air and soar. I pictured a bird in mid-flight, gliding along without having to pump its wings over and over again. Talk about not rushing. The bird gets into the air, pumps its wings a few times and then is able to glide for a long stretch before needing to pump its wings again. There’s no sense of hurry to keep those wings going. There’s just patience to allow those pinions to do their job.

How do we apply this to ourselves? We do the things we need to do to move things forward: we start saving money, we consult with our doctor, we educate ourselves. That’s us pumping our wings. And then we hand things over to God, the pinion in our wings, and allow Him to guide our gliding. We don’t frantically flap, trying to make things go faster; we rest in that gliding until the next time we need to pump our wings: schedule appointments, take medications, ask questions. As we work our way through each step of the process, we trust God’s timing and have the patience to let Him work it out and guide our steps.

Kind of like last week, this can be easier said than done. The good news is, we have a wellspring of examples in Scripture, and my favorite one-stop-shop for examples is Hebrews 11, otherwise known as the Hall of Faith. This chapter of Hebrews summarizes many stories from the Old Testament where people were able to run their race “by faith” (this is how each summary starts). You can find people like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses in this Hall of Faith, and one of my personal favorites, Rahab, as the stand alone woman representing. The author then starts Hebrews 12 by saying, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2a NIV). The examples in Hebrews 11 removed the hindrances and sin that would have gotten in the way of them running their race, and so we should do the same. Then we will be able to, as the KJV translates, “run with patience the race that is set before us.” When we let go of those obstacles, we don’t feel the need to rush ahead in our race, since life is a marathon and not a sprint. It requires us to run with patience so we don’t wear ourselves out or have to stop along the way. Jesus was able to run His race with patience, and that race led Him to the cross, facing opposition all the way.  And if we run this race with our eyes fixed on Him as the ultimate example, we will be able to keep going and not give up.

The Greek word used here shows a connection between patience and faith: “not swerved from purpose, loyalty to faith by even great suffering.” If we know that there’s a greater purpose to the journey we are walking, we won’t feel so inclined to rush to the end of it. We will not be deterred on that path, even when obstacles come our way. We will be able to endure these things knowing that they will ultimately lead to a greater good in God’s plan for us.

When we can replace our rushing with patience, it allows us to slow down and enjoy the journey that God has us on and the season we’re currently in. We’re not distracted by looking forward to the next thing, and we’re not in a hurry to get there. We can look around us in the middle of the race and see all there is to be joyful about right now, and we can trust that God is guiding our path to the end of the next milestone we’re working towards.

There’s nothing wrong with having healthy dreams and desires for our lives, things we want to achieve and growth we want to make. So when we stretch out our wings to make the journey towards them, we must remember that our frantic flapping will only lead to frustration, pride, and anger. If we let God, the pinion of our wings, carry us through with patience, we will find peace, forbearance, and joy in both the journey and the ending.