Perfect Union

“Thank you for your commitment, your vision, your patience and your willingness to take on new challenges.”

This was the sentence that grabbed me in the letter my boss gave me today telling me I had gotten a raise.

What touched me was that she recognized in me a quality I have been working to develop for more than two years.

Patience.

I am a striver. A worker for social change. An activist for two decades. A sense of urgency has often created an anxiety in me that’s contributed to a busyness and a seriousness and a focus on the future at the expense of what and who are right in front of me. Anxiety is not necessary to do the work I am meant to do. Impatience is a lack of faith. As my faith increases so does my patience.

I have had to be patient about my developing patience. I am learning that there’s a great gentleness in patience. I look forward with joyful anticipation to the day when others recognize in me the gentleness and tenderness I am working to develop and deepen inside myself.

Those will be the moments when my outside and inside match.

Perfect union.