In Praise of Patience (the most Boring of Virtues)

I have a confession. I find 1 Corinthians 13 kind of boring. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard it read aloud at nearly every wedding I’ve ever been to. (Could we start picking more interesting Bible verses, please? Just ONCE, I’d love to hear 1 Samuel 27 read from the altar!)

Anyway.

Love is patient. Love is kind...

I'd get to the first line and think, Really? That's where we're starting?

Patience always felt like the least interesting item on the list. 1 Corinthians 13 (The New Mia Translation) would read:

“Love is active. Love is selfless. Love is transformational— and sometimes confrontational.”

Now THAT is a list I could get on board with. But “love is patient”?! That doesn’t naturally compute.

When I think about patience, I imagine standing in line, sitting quietly, delaying gratification. Hard pass.

And don’t even get me started on the phrase, "Just be patient." Anytime I hear that, I want to respond, "What does that even mean?!"

Maybe I need things to be more concrete. More behavioral. Tell me what to do. Tell me where to put my feet. Tell me what words to say. But "be patient" has always felt strangely abstract to me. How do you be a virtue?

Some of this probably comes down to how I’m wired. I'm an Enneagram 8. I like movement. I like momentum. I like getting things done. My mind is almost always moving. My body usually is too. If there's a problem, I want to understand it. NOW. If there's a solution, I want to pursue it. YESTERDAY. If there's growth to be had, let's get after it.

So cultivating patience is... boring. Very boring.

But I'm beginning to think I that I’ve been confusing patience with waiting.

Waiting is the external act. Patience is the internal posture.

And those are not the same thing. I can wait impatiently. I can also wait lovingly.

As I've been sitting with all of this, I think I'm grieving something.

I think a lack of wonder, an abundance of anxiety, and a false sense of responsibility for other people's growth have made me an impatient person.

I've been impatient with my clients.

I've been impatient with my children.

I've been impatient with my husband.

I've been impatient with myself.

When I can see who someone could become, it's surprisingly hard for me to stop relating to that future version of them. I rush toward it. I cheerlead it. I strategize for it. I come to expect it.

And when people don't grow as quickly as I hoped, I push. I become discouraged. Sometimes I write them off. Sometimes I stop marveling at who they already are because I'm so preoccupied with who I think they should become.

The painful part is that I thought I was loving them.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if my anxiety has often crowded out my wonder.

The more I've sat with Paul's words, the more I've begun to wonder if patience isn't simply the first virtue on the list. Maybe it's the prerequisite for every other one.

Maybe patience is the environment that love needs in order to flourish.

Without patience, kindness becomes hurried.

Truth becomes correction.

Generosity becomes rescuing.

Compassion becomes fixing.

Justice becomes control.

Patience creates the inner spaciousness where every other expression of love is finally free to breathe.

And I'm beginning to think that patience isn't passive at all. It's a profound act of trust.

It's the willingness to surrender my timeline. For myself and for others.

To stop trying to force another person's becoming. To resist rushing them toward my conclusions, my insights, or even my vision of who they could become.

Instead, patience says,

I will stay with you.

I will watch.

I will trust that something beautiful can happen here, even if I can't make it happen.

And maybe that's why it comes first.

Because love doesn't merely wait.

Love becomes still.

As a therapist, I spend my life helping people grow. I know how intoxicating it can be to glimpse where someone could be six months from now. Sometimes I can see the next ten steps before they can see the first one.

What a gift. What a temptation.

Recently, a client had the courage to tell me that I had moved too quickly toward growth. She shared something painful, and I nudged her onto my trajectory instead of remaining on hers.

She was right.

She reminded me that people don't need me to rush them toward healing. They need me to accompany them while they heal.

I'm beginning to think that's true far beyond the therapy office.

It's true in marriage.

It's true in parenting.

It's true in friendship.

It's true in discipleship.

People don't change because of what I know.

They change because they feel deeply safe to be flawed and in-process with me.

Creating that kind of safety requires something of me first.

It requires that I become patient.

Not externally.

Internally.

It requires a stillness that says,

I don't need to rush you.

I don't need to force this.

I don't need to drag you toward the finish line.

I can trust that God is already at work in places I cannot yet see.

I'm learning that patience is the stillness that allows us to witness miracles.

It's like standing in a field at dusk, saying nothing, holding your breath, and watching the fireflies slowly come out of hiding.

The moment you start chasing them, they disappear.

Love, I think, knows how to stand quietly enough to witness what hurry would have missed.