more patience
I was twenty-seven years old when I met her. Susan Ward was the kindest, most gracious woman I have ever known. Our sons went to school together and I had just graduated from medical school and was in residency training in family medicine. I was working eighty hours a week, sleep deprived, bearing a heavy weight of guilt because I was missing things like field trips and volunteering to work the lunch line at my children’s school. I was short on sleep, short on patience, and short on friendship.
Susan had a smile a mile wide and the sweetest Mississippi accent. She introduced herself to me and invited my kids to play at her house after school. That was the beginning of a relationship that changed me and the way I have parented. I had never witnessed someone who was so patient and loving with her kids. She didn’t see them as a distraction or a nuisance, and she was constantly teaching them and telling them stories.
I watched her every move: how she was so calm during her son’s meltdowns and easily diffused the situation, how she talked so kindly to her boys when she corrected them, and how she constantly reinforced good behavior. She loved those boys and everybody knew it—most certainly them. I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I hadn’t met her.
I still work at that kind of love and grace and patience, especially with the kids.
Life is stressful and there are a hundred reasons to lose your cool every day. But when you see someone show mercy and grace and kindness and patience, it stops you in your tracks. It’s not the normal way of the world. Susan’s way of living and being with her family changed the trajectory of my life. It so inspired me that I began to reevaluate all of my relationships. Was I extending this kind of rare kindness, love, understanding, forgiveness, and patience to the people in my life?
I’ve spent a lifetime trying to grow up to be just like her.
The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another’s defects, and the bearing of one another’s burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society.
Lawrence G. Lovasik, The Hidden Power of Kindness