I’m Tired of Learning Patience, I Want to Learn Something New!

MARCH BONUS: Exhale Blog Hop 🎉

Ladies and gentlemen, 

I am pleased to accept this award, although I would have liked to be nominated for something else. I know you’re not supposed to say you wanted to win another award in an acceptance speech, but I need to be honest. 

I wanted to win The Most Patient Mother Award. I mean, I didn’t need to win, but just to be nominated would have been an honour. 

Don’t hear me say that I don’t want this award. I do love to win. Of course I will take this home and hide it in a cupboard. 

It’s just… Well, I’ve worked hard to create the illusion of being very patient and easygoing and relaxed. I have multiple degrees. I learned theories. Strategies. Things.

But it is my co-workers, you see, the children. And their shoes. 

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pexels.

I don’t know what it is about We Need to Wear Shoes and We Need to Leave Now, but these situations expose my shocking lack of patience.

I want the children to put their shoes on. The children languish. I want to leave the house. The children delay, despite knowing that Arriving at School on Time is a criterion for best award of all: The Good Mother Award. If they could only put their shoes on and get out of the door, I would not need to see this terrible impatience. But they persist! 

What kind of mother wants to see this awful thing in her heart? I want my head in the sand. I don’t want to do this again. I’m tired of learning patience. I want to learn something new. Peace! Kindness! Goodness! There are plenty of other virtues in Galatians alone. But no, there is patience again and again and again. 

I am beginning to see that perhaps I was never very patient or easygoing or relaxed. 

I think I never had anything that challenged my own kingdom so severely. 

I had a lovely kingdom of my own competence and strength and achievement. 

So, I’m sure you can understand I’m terribly upset to realise I am impatient and finicky and stressed. I don’t want to be the mother who stomps her feet. 

Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. I have to do things. I have to pray. I have to tell people. I have to think about how to reduce my own stress, so it does not spill over. All of this takes time, you see, so it was a terrible setback to my Most Patient Mother nomination.

But I am grateful to win The Rupture and Repair Award. I want to think Patient Mothers never have ruptures, never yell, never lecture, never see their five-year-old son walk into class late with a bowed head and curved shoulders, sadness etched across their frame, because Mummy was grumpy. 

The Rupture and Repair Award required me to let go of Arriving at School on Time. I called my son back out of the classroom, got down on my knees, looked him in the eye and said, 

“I’m sorry I was grumpy. I was stressed about being late, but that is not a good enough reason to yell. Could you please forgive me?” 

And then we sat up on the bench, he curled up in my lap, and I gave him a bear hug. We sat there until he cheered up and I did not check the time. 

As I left, a father of another Pre-Primary kid told me that he thought that I had done well. 

I take it all back, I am so proud to accept this award. 

I can let go of all the other awards. Trying to be perfect just makes me more stressed. We will always have ruptures in this life. 

I can pursue a nomination for The Mum Who Can Apologise Like a Boss Award. It feels more honest to confess my sin. I can teach my son to trust his own gut and emotions, to discern when something is not right or kind, even when the person who hurt him is someone he loves. I want my children to be able to discern good from evil. I want to show them how healthy relationships work: we can apologise and forgive quickly. There is only one perfect parent, and that is God. I can point my children to him every single day and sink into the relief of not needing to be perfect because He is.

So, thank you again, ladies, gentlemen, chairmen of the board for the Rupture and Repair Award. It’s an honour. I’m sorry for complaining that I didn’t win the other awards. 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale - an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Acceptance Speech”.