Patience

Last week was a bit trying for me in the realm of my job. I have a class of fifth graders that I've been with for four weeks, and they are chatty to the extreme. Don't get me wrong -- they are an awesome crew. I just love them -- they are super sweet, completely fun, very bright, and totally spunky. It just gets exhausting because they want to talk all the time, and it's hard to always be reminding and asking them to "please be quiet". So needless to say, as days went by, my patience with their chatter was sloooowly going away. Luckily, something my hubby and I have been doing for Lent provided an awesome suggestion -- one that I'm surprised I hadn't considered previously.

We're doing this little devotional book (individually) every day during Lent. Each night, we each take our own time to spend with God. And it is awesome. Anyway, last week, one of the topics was patience. It suggested asking God for patience when we have difficulty finding it. So I've been trying it. Before I speak, if I'm beginning to feel a little frustrated with the lack of listening/excess of chatting, I send up a little prayer. And things have been 250% better. I'm not sure that the chatting has improved, but I just feel so much more patient when it's not going as well as I'd been hoping. And I've found I've been using those little prayers more and more all around, for lots of different aspects.

Amazing how God answers the teensiest tiniest prayers.