A Coffee Date and Ramblings

Grab your coffee and let's chat...

Patience. 

My ears are practically bleeding, my heart is racing, my face looks like a smelled something bad, and my mouth refuses to utter that eight letter word. (Okay that may have been a tad dramatic, but what's new) I'd like to say patience isn't in my vocabulary, living in the ignorance that I don't need it.. I am doing just fine. The fact is patience isn't in my vocabulary because I am often too stubborn to want to learn the lesson of patience. I remember always hearing about how if you pray for patience... oh boy your prayer would get answer with the longest, most grueling, you're going to want to rip your hair out waiting period of your life. So patience, ha that wouldn't be spoken during a single prayer because that wasn't on the agenda. I suppose that thinking caught up to me because here I am in what feels like the daily headaches from worrying, overthinking, and even... crying. Patience, is being added to my vocabulary and for a while I was the living definition of bitter. Patience just isn't a virtue I had seemed to possess. Rather it was texting... and not getting a text back within the first minute and assuming all hope is practically gone. Remember... dramatic, it's my thing.

I am a huge advocate of fairytales, it's not the romance or the prince though that really makes me swoon. It's hope, it's the fact that when they were pushed down.. feeling useless... discouraged... or confused there was always hope. I hope to live life like a disney princess... feeling hope and seeing the good all around me.

There is a lot that keeps me up at night... not really knowing 100% what I want to do, having to fly by faith as far as a place to live and a plan for next year because every door opens and seems to close right when I get to it. I look in the mirror and feel as though I am a joke. The girl who wasted a scholarship who could have graduated last Saturday. I feel like I am no longer seen for who I am, but as a risk. My doubts end up becoming my enemy... that's the thing though they're just doubts, worries, just a product of overthinking and way too much time on my hands. Patience in this situation could be my best friend, but I often want to treat it like an enemy.

I would rather punch the problem or situation in the face til it complies (I promise I am also not a violent person hahah) but patience tells you to breathe... tells you to remember that "we do not wait in vain, we wait for our God." I had other plans for a different post for LookBrooke but that can wait... as I sat down with my coffee and the newest She Reads Truth devotional, I knew God laid patience on my heart. (The years of avoiding that prayer had come to a complete stop, I could hear the crescendo of music in the background.) Andrea Lucado wrote "My life was not bearing the fruit of patience because somewhere deep down inside of me I didn’t trust my God. And somewhere even deeper inside of me, I had lost hope and convinced myself I was alone." I for a while was going through the motions I would feel discouraged but think well it could always be worse, things aren't so bad.. God has a plan but I admit... I never believed super deep down. I just felt like it was the right, honest thing to do. But she also writes in this article how the word Long-suffering in the New Testament almost always was written in the context of hope. And just like that... I was reminded how patience can be achieved because much like a fairytale we have something even better than a fairy godmother and just like Ariel we too can turn our life around if we make a mistake like selling our soul to a seawitch... we have a God advocating for us each day even when we don't physically see it. Why? Because "He's the God who has promised and secured our full redemption through Jesus Christ." 

Here's to patience, community, and the future. I am not saying there won't be days I'll want to pull my hair out, days I will feel like hiding under the covers, or even days where tears will flow down... but it's what I choose to do after those moments that will matter. There's so much beauty in the world and in life that we will miss focusing too much on ourselves and doubts... so look up and let yourself smile and feel. The sunshine, it's shinning for each of you.