Patience in love means timelessness of the heart, not waiting with bated breath and weighted expectations. It means you have surrendered to what you already know is true deep within your heart, and trusting that everything is unfolding the way it needs to. You’ve stopped attaching yourself to the when. It means being present in the now and focusing on what needs your immediate care and attention–your own needs, passions, and dreams, instead of spending all your precious energy on someone else or doling it out to multiple people and tasks at a time as if it’s unli rice. It means letting the past stay in the past, but honoring the lessons you’ve learned from it. It’s not projecting yourself too far ahead onto an unknowable future that you forget to savor a breathtaking sunset or a shared meal with a loved one.
Patience is that Ray Lamontagne song with the haunting chorus of:
“Be here now, be here now”
Reminding the listener to:
“Don’t let your heart get heavy
Child, inside you there’s a strength that lies”
There is purpose in patience. We have avocado trees at home and avocado is currently in season. Instead of using a net to get all the avocados one by one, I have the patience to let them be until they reach maturity. During this “waiting period” which doesn’t feel like waiting idly at all, I spend time like I always do. I do work that keeps me moving forward, not aimlessly. I reconnect with the divine to get my creative juices flowing. I tend to my soul’s garden of delights. I am reminded of avocados every day–it’s hard not to ignore those shiny, smooth emerald teardrops–tempting to me as apples were to Eve in the Garden of Eden. But I just take a longing look and my heart swells in gratitude for the blessing that I could almost taste–soft and creamy, a pleasure with muscovado. “Not yet, Lea. But almost there. Have patience, dearest. We are teaching you the virtue of patience.”
Then on a day when I least expect it, avocados just break off from the branches and fall to the ground in numbers. Only then do I pick them up one by one and enjoy the literal fruits of patience. You cannot force something to come to fruition until it’s time. Patience reveals its own rewards.
The Constant Pilgrim 