Love is Patient

Someone send me this ... quite long .. i'm only taking parts of it coz the original passage was like reading bible ... sorry, not trying to offend the christian..

In our fast paced modern life, we have to complete our projects ahead of competitors. We carry this behavior trait back to our family and we are impatient when we do not get our way. We expect our spouse to cater to us immediately after one reminder or two. When we don’t get what we want and at the time desired, we become irritated or angry. But being patient means allowing, accommodating and accepting the other person’s ideas, values, personality and mannerism. So we need to constantly remind ourselves: “Am I loving when I don’t accommodate my spouse’s ways? Do I show love when I don’t accept my spouse’s point of view?” We know for certain that we do not practice love at that particular moment since a loving heart is a patient heart.

Little things inevitably happen in our lives and in our homes. Misunderstanding and conflict come to every home. During such moments, we get angry and sulk. We tend to blame: Why must I suffer the hurt and tantrum? Why should I bear the injury? Why must I endure the accusation? Why should I accept the slight? But, for any family relationship to flourish we need patience to humbly resolve the conflict. And, patience means accepting, bearing, enduring, over-looking, suffering the slights, shortcomings, blame, accusation, tantrums, injuries and hurts, without retaliation. Thus we must regularly ask: “Am I spending time to patiently cultivate the family relationship? Have I been patient to grow our relationship? Do I neglect to improve our relationship because I am impatient?

In order to be able to develop this loving patience we have to learn to forgive readily and endlessly. As Mother Teresa said, “if we really want to love, we must learn to forgive before anything else.” (One heart full of love, 113) “We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly.” (“A Gift for God”, 18) St Paul says, “Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any one of you has a complaint against someone else.”(Colossians 3:13)

But it is people we have to contend with. When people get close together, there is bound to be personality friction, for no two persons are alike. Rub two pieces of wood together, and you will have fire. Put people together under the same roof, in the same office or in the same parish or in the same house, like husband and wife, parents and children, and you will have plenty of fuel for a good fight.

A feuding married couple went to a priest for counseling. The priest sat at his desk, and the couple sat opposite him, and a cat and dog sat placidly by the desk. When the priest had finished his counseling, he concluded with these words: “Joe and Mary, why can’t you get along like this cat and dog?” Joe quipped, “Father, tie them together and see how long they’ll stay that way.”

As cars need a lubricant to keep parts that rub against other parts, like the pistons in the motor, from freezing fast, so people need a lubricant to keep them living smoothly together. That lubricant is the virtue of patience.

How often we may have thought that the people around us are stupid or do stupid things. Have you ever said, “He or she drives me up a wall!” “He or she means well, but they get on my nerves.” Or you complain, “Why they would make holy Job lose his patience.” You are really losing yours when you so think.

Then there are other people who afflict us just by their behavior. They are arrogant, self-righteous, judgmental. They look down on others, are snobbish, condemn others, spurn them, speak evil against them. Patience means accepting, enduring, suffering (that is where the word came from: patiens means “suffering”) the slights, injuries, hurts inflicted by people

A salesman puts up with all kinds of abuse--just to make a sale.
Indians used to endure frightful tortures--just to become “a brave,”
Such endurance may be laudable, but it is not necessarily virtuous.

“Love is patient,” that is, true patience must be an expression of love. It is that motive which makes all endurance a virtue. It is not what we do that counts, but why; not the mountains we move, but the motives that impel us to move them.

We need patience just to survive--for people are people. Some will be inconsiderate, some will be downright mean and selfish. And we shall inevitably run into such people. Their meanness and inconsideration could make us sad, depressed or discouraged. If we let that happen, life for us will come to a standstill. Sorrow, brings death, it does no good to yield to it, the enemy of life.

Patience, on the contrary, does not just endure hurts and injuries; rather it embraces them with love and so sucks out the venom in them. Instead of sorrow, there is joy--joy in knowing that evil has been turned into good.

Without patience we will not survive in life. I remember flying from Chicago to Kansas City one summer. It was the bumpiest ride I ever had. The wings flapped like a seal before breakfast. I thought the plane would fall apart. Later, I learned that elasticity had been built into the wings on purpose. Had the wings been rigid and inflexible, the sudden stresses and strains from wind and air pockets would have snapped them.
On their drawing boards, engineers call this give and take “tolerance.” Tolerance is the amount of stress a wing can take before it snaps.
What engineers build into the cold end of an aluminum wing, we must build into our hearts. How many homes have been broken up, because there is no tolerance---no give or take, no patience.

Like, “The Oak and the Reed.” In a mighty storm the proud Oak said, “I will not bend before the wind.” Then a sudden strong gust of wind came and uprooted the unbending Oak. As the Oak lay prostrate on the ground, it saw a tiny reed swaying in the storm. The Oak asked, “How is it that I who am so mighty have been uprooted, whereas you who are so frail still stand in the storm?’’ The Reed answered, ‘‘I give in a little to the wind.” How often just to give in, to say, “I’m sorry,” has saved many a relationship.

Patience is not weakness; it is not becoming a door mat. It is an experience of such great love that it wins over people. No person ever treated Abraham Lincoln with greater contempt than Edwin Stanton. He called Lincoln a “low cunning clown.” He nicknamed him “the original gorilla.” Lincoln said nothing. Instead, when he needed a Secretary of War, Lincoln appointed Stanton, because he was the best man for the job. He treated Stanton with every courtesy. The years wore on. The night came when Lincoln was assassinated. The body of the murdered President was taken to a little room. That night, Stanton looked down on the face of Lincoln in all its ruggedness; and, through tears, Stanton said: “There lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen.” The patience of love had conquered in the end.

It is only patience that will help people become better than they are and make us better than we are.