PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 23: “Inner peace is impossible without patience. Wisdom requires patience. Spiritual growth implies the mastery of patience. Patience allows the unfolding of destiny to proceed at its own unhurried pace.” ― Brian L. Weiss
All of the things I most desire in life; Peace, Spiritual growth, and Wisdom require me to be patient with myself and my unfolding in recovery and with life itself.
I have a malformed iris in my garden. It is breaking my heart, because it is trying to bloom inside a leaf of the plant. I cannot force it to bloom as it should, nor can I “fix” the stalk and make it grow in a normal way. I can only take tiny pieces of the leaf away so it can grow up taller to bloom when the other buds form. I have never seen this before; and do not know what may have caused it.
Since some of my bulbs are new in my garden this year, I am not sure what the true color and nature of this bulb is anyway. I must be patient with its slow growth and allow it to do what it is going to do, according to the plan it has with Nature.
This kind of patience is not mine. I have to practice, every day, these principles. Patience with myself and those things I want to see the “results” of immediately are the challenges I have faced since I began this process.
As a gardener, I am always challenged with growing of food. As soon as it begins to bud or form any type of fruit or vegetable, I am anxious to taste it and see what flavors are being created by me and some water and some sunshine and all the protection I must provide from the cats I feed. This is how I grow a garden.
It is the same with flowers. I plant a bulb or a seed or a plant and get so excited to see what it is going to do. Over time, I have become familiar with some of the flowers I love the most. Some of them come in very challenging ways.
I love sweet peas and moonflowers. Both are difficult to grow, because the seeds have to be soaked and then “nicked” to sprout. I can plant whole handfuls of seeds and only get 2-3 shoots to come up. Then I have to keep them from the cats, who love to dig in the gardens. I put wire and little sticks everywhere to protect the baby seedlings, but sometimes this, too, is damaged.
So, this is why the Universal Power has given me the love of growing things. I must be patient. Some folks are given children to nurture. We all know the challenges of being patient with their processes and learning curves!
Some days are more Zen for me than others. I may practice loving patience with the cats and the gardens and the people around me; but lose it on the freeway when I am late to a destination and get upset that I am in too much traffic.
Traffic is a given. There are places I do not enjoy travelling to because the traffic is so dense. Other times, I am okay with that and just enjoy the time to myself or time with a friend while we move slowly and have conversation.
What I don’t want to do is rush through my life, believing that every destination is a goal or that every goal is a destination. Neither is true. The journey is the time spent well or poorly. That must be the way I view my life.
Step 7 gives me the opportunity, again and again, to either practice my character defects or to not practice them. I get that choice. I cannot remove them completely, that is work for a greater Being, but I can choose not to give them bigger muscles.
So, I am practicing Patience today instead of impatience. It is a good day
Dolphin Hug 