Patience is one of those words in the English vocabulary that sounds like and mentally feels like it means. It is also an attribute that I haven’t always had much of, if it were a substance it would be very difficult to can or bottle in order to have a secondary supply in case of emergency. However, I appreciated what one of my granddaughters said about it a few years ago. Emily had served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Caribbean islands area. Young women serve eighteen months before they are released to return home. When Emily’s eighteen months were up, she was anxious to return home and her family in Utah were anxious to have her home. However, her travel arrangements home were not exactly streamlined but her very mature response was noteworthy; She wrote, “I was supposed to be home Friday morning at 9:30 but the Caribbean airline service (Liat) is not very reliable, and so I ended up spending many hours at the airports and having delays and flying from island to island before I finally made it home at 11 p.m. on Friday. Needless to say I was very tired, and I learned a lot of patience that day. Everyone was throwing beefy fits and yelling at the airport people, and I just said to myself why worry and why dwell on things you can’t change?!”
Airports and air travel in general are probably where more complaints are expressed than any other mode of travel. Patience is short lived while intolerance has longevity where air travel is concerned.
The following story written by Mary Ann Davis had a different ending to it than expected:
“A man observed a woman in the grocery store with a three year old girl in her cart. As they passed the cookie section, the child asked for cookies and her mother told her “no.” The little girl immediately began to whine and fuss, and the mother said quietly, “Now Ellen, we just have half of the aisles left to go through; don’t be upset. It won’t take long.” He passed them again in the candy aisle. Of course, the little girl began to shout for candy. When she was told she couldn’t have any, she began to cry. The mother said, “There, there, Ellen, don’t cry. Only two more aisles to go, and then we’ll be checking out.” The man again happened to be behind the pair at the checkout, where the little girl immediately began to clamor for gum and burst into a terrible tantrum upon discovering there would be no gum purchased today. The mother patiently said, “Ellen, we’ll be through this checkout line in five minutes, and then you can go home and have a nice nap. ”The man followed them out to the parking lot and stopped the woman to compliment her. “I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Ellen…”The mother broke in, “My little girl’s name is Tammy…I’m Ellen.” Ah! If we could all just talk ourselves through our moments of challenges as did Ellen! Patience is a celestial characteristic, a virtue, and those who are blessed with it naturally, are closer to God, in character, than those of us who have less than desired.