Patience

It's Lent. Did you know that? If not, now you do. I'm Orthodox, so we call it Great Lent, which actually means "this is going to be much harder than Lent." During Lent, those who observe Lent usually give up one thing (it's supposed to be one thing that is kind of a crutch for them) and maybe give up meat on Fridays. Real strict Catholics also give up meat on Wednesdays. For Great Lent Orthodox give up meat (including fish with a backbone), dairy, olive oil, and wine. The olive oil and wine aren't hard for me to give up. My family didn't use olive oil at home, so I can easily work around that, and I'm allergic to red wine and only drink white wine on rare occasions. Over time I've started eating less and less meat. It's more of a problem because I'm not supposed to eat it. It's that "you can't have this so you really, really want it" mentality. The hard part is no dairy. I like milk and cheese and ice cream and yogurt and almost anything that contains dairy. It's hard. And soy milk just doesn't taste the same. And do you know how hard it is to go out to dinner and not get something with cheese on it? Everything comes with cheese! I don't see how vegans do it. Kudos to them. But this isn't what this post is really about

This year for the Great Lent, I think God is trying to hammer patience into me. Seriously. I know that people have heard about others praying for patience. Usually what happens when you pray for patience is that a lot of things happen to test your patience. Patience isn't given, it's built. To be honest, it's been a long time since I've prayed for patience. I have immense amounts of patience when it comes to puppies, kitties, and small children. Heap loads of patience! I have relatively no patience when it comes to teenagers and adults. My problem is that I expect adults to act like adults, but they don't. Or at least the ones that I find myself around regularly don't. Maybe it is due to the type of environment that I work in. Maybe it is due to the fact that the people that I find myself around were raised in a vastly different culture from me (from being raised in a different part of the US to being raised in different countries). Maybe I just expect too much. But I know that I'm not the only one who has noticed this. I had a colleague tell me once that one of his greatest disappointments after becoming an adult was realizing that many adults don't act like adults. I have also found this to be true.

I am not trying to sit here and tell you that I am better than others - that I am not flawed. I would be the first person to stand up and admit that I am flawed. Apparently my first flaw that I need to work on is patience. Patience with myself. Patience with others. My goal is to get to the point where when certain people come into my office I don't think "if this person steps in here one more time today, I'm going to throw something at their head!" (Don't worry, these days I'm all bark and no bite.)