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A question, please: How do you react when you are standing in line, and suddenly all the lines are moving along and yours is not? What if the person holding up the line is chatting to the clerk?

Or digging for a wallet that could have been found while waiting in line? 

Or rearranging her purse before moving away?

We often hear that with age (and faith) come wisdom and patience. It is, in fact, required of us according to God’s Word.

I don’t know about you, Recovering SuperGal sister, but while I’m getting better at wisdom, my patience piece needs work.

Okay, it needs major renovation.

Just when I think I’m starting to hold up my share of the Lori/God relationship, my patience is tested.

Make that my lack of patience. Numerous times each day.

One minute I’m feeling calm and controlled. Then, bam! I’m muttering, exclaiming, sighing, and rolling my eyes to show the world that I could do whatever-it-is-you-are-doing better than you are doing it.

Just dare to drive too slowly, ask me to repeat myself (again!), not pay attention to what I said and did I mention drive too slowly? Away goes smiling Lori, replaced by haughty SuperGal. The one with the well-rehearsed, barely perceptible, disapproving head shake. And the one-eyebrow raised, are-you-kidding-me? stare.

Impatience. Another in a long list of rather undesirable SuperGal traits.

“Oh, but I’ve made such good progress in other areas,” I tell myself. “I’ve given God priority by spending time with Him each morning, reading His Word, listening for His voice.”

Surrendering some of the big things I finally learned I can’t control anyway. Big deal. Because even that took me well into middle age to figure out.

But it’s the little things that trip me up and cause me to fall flat on my New Lori face. It’s the little things I try to justify.

Like raging impatience. Even though it stings me with stress-filled schrapnel all day long. “No biggie,” I rationalize. “I’m just high strung. God knows that.”

Right.

If we don’t see ourselves as broken, we don’t see a need to get fixed.

God most definitely sees our impatience as a problem. He wants us to cut it out. 

So why do I seem to want to hang on to it? Do I enjoy the superior, smarter-than-you feeling that I get when I let someone else know that they’ve displeased me? Perhaps. There is a prideful but fleeting satisfaction there. A feeling of power over another.

Impatience, to some of us SuperGals, feels as natural as breathing. But impatience is the fruit of pride. It signals entitlement. Self-centeredness. Yucky stuff.

Spiritually and intellectually, I know in my knower that I have no ability to change my impatient bent without God’s help. “I’m sorry, Lord. Please help me be more calm. Help me replace my desire to be impatient with Your patience.”

Hearing this, the Holy Spirit grabs the oil can to lube up my tin heart. He speaks to me gently. Instructs me. “That squeak has got to go,” He tells me. “The more you resist this change, try to justify it, the longer it will take.”

SuperGals, God will give us the strength to resist impatience, but we need to do our share. We have to practice patience. We have to demonstrate our trust that God can change our feelings of impatience by acting as though He already has!

We don’t have to feel patient to act patiently.

Today, at some point, I will find myself zipping along. I may or may not be in a particular rush, but that’s really irrelevant. I’m pretty much always trying to get somewhere, anywhere, quickly. It’s what SuperGals do. We try to break our own best time. And sure as shootin’, a car will turn onto the road right in front of me. It will be a Buick being driven by a smallish person with white hair and a Jeff cap.

Breathe deeply, Recovering SuperGal. Remain calm. Flash a smile, even if it hurts.

Patience is how we act while we’re waiting.

“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning of it, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Do not be quick in spirit to be angry or vexed, for anger and vexation lodge in the bosom of fools.”  ~ Ecclesiastes 7:8-9 (Amp)