Do not be anxious. Matthew 6:25
This old dog needs to learn a new trick. I pretty much have “roll over” and “beg” down pat. What I really need to learn right now is “patience.”
I have an obsessive-compulsive personality and I enjoy multitasking. My life script is “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” I would much rather be “shooting the rapids” than “going with the flow.”
God knows I can’t keep this pace up forever so he is putting me in more and more situations where I can learn patience in preparation for the days when I am physically unable to go like a bat out of hell and expect others to do the same.
I am certainly learning patience from my volunteer work in the Caribbean missions. For instance, I am learning how spoiled we are in the United States compared to many places in the world. We are so used to convenience.
Most things are slower down there. Everything seems to take enormously more time than I planned. Nothing seems convenient, whether it is getting from place to place or finding a store that has what you need.
Recently, I was in Canada leading a priest retreat. I was told that a priest from another part of the world would drive me to the retreat house about an hour away. I was promised he would get me there early enough to get set up. We were supposed to leave at 1 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., he comes down the stairs to tell me that he would be ready in 10 minutes. About 30 minutes later he showed up. I was quietly steaming inside.
He had with him a hand-written piece of paper with directions which were useless. We got lost. He had a GPS that someone gave him that didn’t work. He was making u-turns in the rain in heavy traffic. We were speeding and tailgating cars as I held on for dear life. He finally pulled over, barely out of the traffic, to program his cell phone GPS.
Barely back on the road, he announced that his “out of gas” light had come on. He assured me it was probably a malfunction even though the dial said “empty” in two places. By this time, I was practically begging him to stop. The first gas station was “closed,” even though we “went back” to check. More gas wasted. We pulled into the next one “on fumes.” We still weren’t “there,” but at least we had a full tank of gas to be lost on.
About three hours late, we finally got to the retreat house. I was rushing around trying to find the monk who was supposed to have the Power Point projector set up. He knew nothing about it. My nerves were shot. I was exhausted before I even started, but eventually everything fell into place.
What have I learned recently about patience? My silly anxiety attacks are quite pointless, mostly.
To read more from Father Knott, visit his blog: FatherKnott.com.
