The Virtue Nobody Wants

In a conversation with a couple of friends recently at a prayer meeting, someone mentioned that she would never pray for patience. “It’s a dangerous prayer.”

We laughed, knowing exactly what she meant. If you pray for patience, God will give you plenty of practice, and who wants that?

Yet as I was confronted with several frustrating situations subsequently, it occurred to me that perhaps patience is the exact antidote to frustration.

In the Healing Codes system, the virtues under the Patience category are: patience, acceptance, fairness, justice, mercy, balancing selfishness and selflessness, being fully present, living in the now.

Who doesn’t want these things?

The negative emotions in this category are: impatience, anger, frustration, insecurity, desire for love substitutes (addictions come in here), bitterness.

Who wants these things?

I realized I have a big issue with patience. Or rather, that frustration, impatience, insecurity, and anger all too frequently color my emotional landscape.

So I am doing what my friends said they’d never do: I’m praying for more patience. In particular, I’m focusing on balancing selfishness and selflessness (I love that the virtue is a balance between these), and living fully in the present.

God has been patiently nagging me about this category for some time. As I think about how patient God is with me, I want patience all the more.

1 Corinthians 13 says the first characteristic of love is patience. God’s perfect love, manifested in patience among other things, is driving out my fear of how God might work this out in me.

It may take a long time to gain some traction in this virtue, but hey, I can be patient with the baby steps of progress, right? Isn’t that what it’s all about?