MamaBlogga

The major road that runs by my house is undergoing major construction. Has been for months, will be for at least another year (that’s the DOT estimate, so we should probably double it).

It is horrendous to drive. One week, all four lanes of traffic are stuffed into an area that will eventually house three lanes, the next week, they’re all on the other side of the road. There are more orange and white cones out there than I’ve seen Sego Lilies (the Utah State Flower) in my whole life. The cones courteously denote massive lane shifts, but as yet can’t help me when my traffic light is on the other side of the road—OHMYGOODNESSIT’SREDHITTHEBRAKES!!!!

However, I know that one day, probably many years from now, possibly after we move away from here, this road will be very nice. Although sometimes I lament that at the rate they’re going, by the time they finish it’ll be time to resurface it, I’m hoping that for at least a few months, we’ll be able to enjoy a wider, smoother and less congested road.

But until then, I’m going to be whining and complaining about the mess and the noise and the daily brushes with death.

And yesterday it hit me—this is pretty much the story of my life. I spend so much time obsessing over, worrying about and complaining about the stuff I don’t want to deal with today. Meanwhile, I keep looking (and hoping) for a smoother road ahead.

Will I ever know when I get there?

There are a number of mothers that I admire, my own mother not least among them. But today I’m writing about two of my good friends. They’re my neighbors and friends. They each have many more children than I do (which isn’t so hard, since I do only have the one so far!).

But the reason that I admire them so much isn’t because they somehow manage to run perfect households filled with perfect children and are always perfect mothers—though it often seems that way to me on the outside.

Fortunately, we’ve become good enough friends that I know that’s not the truth. I would be incredibly intimidated by them and their wonderful families if it weren’t for the fact that my friends are so brutally honest about their lives—and their struggles.

I appreciate my friends’ battles with patience and other problems. Not because it makes me feel superior to them—but because I understand their struggles so deeply. It’s reassuring to know that even mothers who really do have so much under control (at least in my opinion) aren’t perfect. It helps me to adjust my expectations for myself, too.

So thank you, my friends, for being honest about your real lives and sharing your struggles with me.

I know it can be pretty easy to share our struggles with people online who we’ll probably never meet in person, but that’s one of the reasons why I started this blog, to share my struggles. Please feel free to share your struggles with me anytime.

As I’ve been working on patience a lot lately (okay, always), I’ve had occasion to think about it quite a bit as well. And I realized that I don’t always know what patience is.

I’ve been surprised to find that there was actually a lag between losing my temper and losing my patience. I think that having a lag there is a big improvement over going to straight to losing my patience!

Okay, I know that sounded a little esoteric, so here’s a more concrete explanation: I’ve realized that the more I work on patience, I have still gotten angry or frustrated (lost my temper)—but I hadn’t yet acted on that to “lose my patience.”

I’ve been disappointed with myself for losing my temper as I’m working on developing patience. But when I lose my temper, if I haven’t yet acted in anger, I don’t think I’ve lost my patience. If I recognize how I’m feeling, and stop and make an effort not to act in anger, I can calm down and keep my patience.

Does that sound like an artificial distinction? I thought it was, especially when I lost my temper and my patience happened in the same instant. But the more I think about it, and the more of a gap I can create between losing my temper and losing my patience, the more I believe that this is a sign of progress. As long as I keep choosing to calm myself down, anyway.

Of course, that’s the thing with patience—it’s something you get to work on forever, since it can be so easy to lose! And once I start getting better about being patient (you know, in ten or fifteen years) (only half joking), I can work on not getting angry, either.