From Patience to Payoffs

“Did you grade my essay yet, Ms. McCullough?”

“When will the state send us our test results? Will we know our grades before school’s out?”

“How many more days until our next break?”

“When are we gonna finish this Shakespeare stuff?”

My frequent answer to questions like these was, “Patience is a virtue.”

Many of my students rolled their eyes when I responded with this platitude.

My mother often encouraged my patience with quips like “A watched pot never boils” and “Good things come to those who wait.”

When I wanted to give up before a task was completed, my father told me “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and I would need to “lick the calf over again” if I didn’t do the job right the first time. (I never really understood how that phrase got its meaning.)

At any rate, I’m sharing these pithy sayings to remind everyone that patience eventually has a payoff.

I was lousy at playing the piano when I took lessons as a child. Now, after honing my skills over the years, I enjoy serving as my church pianist.

I started taking violin lessons over ten years ago, and I’m sure my teacher needed ear plugs to suffer through those early years of torture. Now, I’m certainly not a virtuoso, but my stick-to-itiveness has begun to pay off. I can maybe see the forest through the trees.

I have been writing children’s books for over twenty years. In the beginning I filed my rejection letters in a notebook, but I eventually gave up focusing on the rejections and started looking for new opportunities.

Like one of my college professors who papered his office walls with rejection notices, I have received numerous “not a good fit” comments. However, my perseverance has paid off, and my first children’s book will be released on October 1. To say that I am excited is a massive understatement. Here’s the Amazon link: https://a.co/d/7Heq42U

Stay tuned for more information about Look for the Pink Ribbons in my fall newsletter. I can’t wait to share it with you!

To those of you thinking of giving up because you are weary of rejection, remember the words of English theologian Thomas Fuller: “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

We can also learn from the experience of Aesop’s crow as he persevered to quench his thirst:

A crow, so thirsty that he could not even caw, came upon a pitcher which once had been full of water. But when he put his beak into the pitcher’s mouth, he found that only a little water was left in it. Strain and strive as he might, he was not able to reach far enough down to get at it. He tried to break the pitcher, then to overturn it, but his strength was not equal to the task. Just as he was about to give up in despair, a thought came to him. He picked up a pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the pitcher. One by one he kept dropping pebbles into the pitcher until the water mounted to the brim. Then perching himself upon the handle he drank and drank until his thirst was quenched. —Aesop’s Fables “The Crow and the Pitcher”

That crow gives us great advice and teaches us not to give in to despair. Whatever goal lies before us, we must keep chipping away at it, drop by drop.

On a final note, some of life’s platitudes do hold true. With patience and perseverance, payoffs can happen.

Lord, give me patience, but please hurry!

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”—Abraham Lincoln

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”—Leo Tolstoy

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”—Emily Dickinson

“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”—Watty Piper

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”—Aristotle

“Never, never, never give up.”—Winston Churchill

Proverbs 3:5-6; Romans 12:12; Galatians 6:9; Philippians 4:6; Jeremiah 29:11