Patience

Galatians 5:22-23  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), gentleness, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

As I have been studying patience, I wondered why that is a Fruit of the Spirit.  The KJV calls it longsuffering, or long-suffering.  Suffering long.  In modern language it is patience. The word 'patience' is so nice and neat.  It sounds like a quality of waiting with a smile on our face, singing a hymn and picking flowers in the sunshine until whatever we're waiting for comes to pass.  I rather think the KJV depicts this fruit just as it is.  And it is a fruit that is equal to love, joy and peace.

I think we all have, or are all, 'suffering long'.  We all have that private agony simmering in our gut that causes us to suffer in our own way, for our own reasons.  It took me until the age of 42 to be relieved of the suffering that comes from feeling like I didn't belong anywhere, to anyone.  It's tough when your parents leave you. I'm  referring to that compete emotional detachment of love, yet they don't leave you enough for anyone to be able to adopt you - for someone to say, "You mean so much to me that I want you to be a member of my family - my child.  You can rest knowing you belong to me."  To be a foster child whose parents never legally or fully give you away means that you might spend your Christmas in a hotel room with a bottle of booze to keep you company at the age of 18 because your mother and father have moved on, and you were not fully 'claimed' as a child.  You know you can't 'crash' anyone's Christmas, so you quiver with fear and loneliness as you drink yourself to sleep.  A newly adult foster child might.  I did.  The agony.  The anger.  The inner thrashing around, trying to wrestle with the 'why's' of it all.  No matter how many years passed, that scared, angry little child remained.

I lived with each of my parents for a while at different times when I was a kid.  In the summer, my father had me leave the house when I got up in the morning and I couldn't come home until dusk.  Sometimes I had a lunch.  He told me in a fit of anger that my mother tricked him by secretly stopping her birth control and I, their mistake, was born 9 months later.  When I was with my mother, she told the same story as though it was the funniest thing in the world.  I laughed with her, not knowing why, feeling ugly and invisible. They didn't want me, but they didn't want anyone else to have me.  They robbed me of a 'mom and dad', and they didn't even know or care that it tore me apart.  This was torture to me - suffering. For forty-two long, hard years.  I tried to make it up by marrying and trying to fit in with my husband's family, but when all was said and done, I didn't belong to them, either, and we parted ways. When the end came, I told my best friend, my biological sister, "You're dead to me".  What originally 'happened' to me as an innocent child, I began to thrive on. Rejection.  I will hurt you with rejection before you can hurt me.  What a mess I created.  What a mess I became. I ultimately ran away from the family and friends I had left who truly loved me, leaving them in the muddy wake of my hate.

As the Lord gently brought me home to care for my Gram, I had to bring all that hurt, that inner turmoil to the table when I completely gave myself to Him.  I had secretly held Him responsible for it all, and I carried a grudge I thought He didn't know about. Yes, I had become a Christian years earlier, but I didn't trust Him all the way.  Gram always said, "God never makes a mistake", so He knew, He allowed, He could have easily written my life without the rejection, but He didn't.  How was that not a mistake?

As I began to trust, as I looked at my life through His promises and His love, the thick block of ice around my heart began to melt.  He was my Heavenly Father and I was His child.  He allowed me to hurt, but He was always there to comfort.  It was I who shut Him out - not the other way around.  Somewhere, love conquered.  Forgiveness engulfed me.  My long suffering was over.  Had my past changed?  No, but my heart did.

There's something to be said for putting yourself in someone else's shoes, especially someone who you hate for hurting you.  I began to see my mother, having three children in less than four years.  She was young - only 24 when she walked away.  She was living with a man who was angry, controlling and unpredictable.  It was too much.  When she left us, did she feel like a failure?  Maybe.  Experiencing defeat like that can cause you to run away and not look back.  I did that very thing, too, when I fell flat on my face.  I thought of my dad, adopted himself, with so many questions left unanswered.  He felt rejected.  His anger kept him from being close to anyone.  His insecurities left him craving control of everyone and everything for fear of being hurt, I think.  His inner suffering turned him into a very emotionally sick man.  He derived temporary pleasure in lashing out and hurting others, then sunk into depression afterward when they turned their backs.  I did that too.

People who loved me forgave me, even though I hurt them so deeply.  The Lord forgave me everything, too.  How dare I withhold that forgiveness from my parents! I slowly began to see things I never saw before, and I truly loved and forgave them for the first time in my life. My father had been dead for years, and my mother hadn't spoken to me in just as long, yet I forgave and was healed.

Gratefulness for who He is replaced my suspicion that God was ambivalent about my hurt, and as I looked back on my life, I saw all the ways people stepped in and cared with all their hearts for my sisters and me.  These people who loved us had no reason to care for us as though we were their own children, but they did - all our lives, and they still selflessly love and care to this day.  Instead of seeing the rejection of people who were obligated to love me because I was born to them, my heart leaped with joy for the tender care of those who had no obligation at all!

As I said, we all have that inner agony that we wrestle with.  Some for weeks, months or  years, some for life.  We suffer for our loved ones and our children to surrender to the Lord.  We suffer over insecurities.  We suffer for unmet dreams to become reality.  I suffer with the uncertainty of my physical future.  And longsuffering is a Fruit of the Spirit.  Why?  Is it because the world also suffers and can't help but look to us for answers on 'how' to suffer because we are Christians?  Is suffering a test of our faith?  Does suffering drive us to our knees so we realize that we need God's peace?  I believe so on all counts.  Our Father has many more reasons, I'm sure..

I also believe that longsuffering is a matter of trust.  We all suffer - the longer we suffer with patience, the more our fruit grows.  Trusting the Lord does not erase our suffering, but trust puts it all in perspective.  When we trust Him, we can be patient.  With trust, we can commit ourselves, our children, our marriages, our pasts, our futures, our suffering, to the Lord, knowing He will work it all out for our good in His time.  His time, not ours.  One thing is certain, no matter how grueling the pain is, or how long we have to wait for an answer for our deepest need, it is His will that we run with patience the race that is set before us. Heb 12:1b 

1 Peter 4:19
Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.


As with love, joy and peace, I learned that it all comes back to fully trusting my Father, and forgiving all people everything.  After all, He forgave me (and you) everything, didn't He?