We live in a microwave society. We expect everything to happen NOW. We get impatient when we have to wait for the TV listings to scroll on the TV channel. We lose patience while waiting for a web page to load – after all, ten seconds feels like forever while looking at a blank screen. We have 24-hour news and access to just about anything we could possibly want to know through the Internet. Learning how to wait is a real challenge in our society.

Many people say they want to learn how to be patient, but they don’t want to WAIT to do this. Isn’t waiting the very thing that forces us to develop patience in the first place? I don’t know one person who enjoys waiting. However, I do know people who manage to find contentment despite having to wait. Those are the people who have developed patience.

Patience is a virtue that can be used in many areas of your life. Patience is particularly helpful once you become a parent. Children can test the patience of Job, so think about your waiting period as a training experience that will help mold you into a better parent when your child joins your family.

The only way to develop patience is to wait. Unlike the other emotions I have discussed, there is no “shortcut” or “trick” to developing patience. Patience is something that you develop over time. At some point, you realize that generating so much impatient energy is getting you nowhere and is just spinning your wheels. Your child will come when it is time for him to come, and there is nothing that you can do to speed up the process. When I finally resigned myself to the fact that I had no power to expedite the adoption process, I received “the” call telling us that we had been matched.

I still do not enjoy waiting, and I seriously doubt that I ever will. However, I no longer figuratively bang my head against the wall in frustration over waiting. I have accepted that some of the things in life that are most worth having come after a period of waiting.

Related Topics:

• Surviving the Wait series



• Russian Adoption: How To Wait Without Losing Your Sanity



• The adoption wait and ways to pass the time



• Emotions of Adoption Series