The Patience You Thought You Had
There are few places better suited to revealing the true condition of your soul than a grocery store with one checkout lane open.
You can spend the morning praying. Read Scripture. Listen to something profound. Feel unusually centered. Maybe even think, I really am becoming a more patient person.
Then you get to the register. The person in front of you has 47 items in the “15 Items or Less” lane. And coupons. Paper coupons. One of them may have expired during the Bush administration.
Suddenly, the fruits of the Spirit are being subjected to independent verification.
This is where formation gets interesting.
The Checkout Line Problem
We tend to imagine patience as something we’ll summon for life’s genuinely difficult moments: illness, loss, uncertainty, a difficult relationship. And, of course, we need it there.
But most Tuesdays don’t give us a heroic opportunity to practice patience. They give us Gary.
Gary waits until the cashier announces his total before remembering that commerce generally involves some form of payment. He begins looking for his wallet. Front pocket. Back pocket. Other back pocket. Jacket. Front pocket again, apparently in case the wallet arrived while he was gone.
Nothing.
Now Gary looks surprised. You are not surprised. You have been emotionally preparing for this since produce.
Eventually, Gary finds his wallet. You experience a brief surge of affection for him. We did it, Gary.
But Gary isn’t finished. Gary has questions about the receipt.
And somewhere around minute nine, you begin experiencing thoughts about another human being that would be difficult to reconcile with the Sermon on the Mount.
This is the problem with ordinary life. It keeps interrupting the person we imagine ourselves to be with evidence about the person we actually are.
Jesus Had Interruptions Too
The Gospels are full of people interrupting Jesus. He’s traveling somewhere; someone stops Him. He’s teaching; someone needs something. He’s trying to get away with His disciples; a crowd finds Him.
Honestly, the man could barely walk anywhere without somebody needing a healing, an explanation, a miracle, lunch for five thousand people, or clarification about a parable.
In Mark 5, Jesus is on His way to help Jairus’s dying daughter when a woman reaches through the crowd and touches His clothes. If there were ever a legitimate reason to say, I cannot deal with this right now, this was it.
But Jesus stops.
“Who touched my clothes?” — Mark 5:30
The disciples basically respond: Seriously?
There’s a crowd pressing against Him from every direction. Asking who touched Him is roughly like standing in the middle of Costco on Saturday and asking who bumped your cart.
But Jesus notices the person inside the interruption. That’s considerably harder than it sounds, because we tend to divide the world into two categories: what I’m trying to accomplish and things preventing me from accomplishing it.
Unfortunately, the second category frequently contains people.
Jesus had an irritating habit of treating those people as the point.
Meanwhile, Gary Has Escalated the Situation
Back at the grocery store, there has been a development.
Gary would like to pay in exact change.
Of course he would.
Gary has apparently been saving coins specifically for this moment. The cashier says the total again. Gary begins counting.
You consider changing lanes. But you’ve already invested eleven minutes in Gary, and leaving now would mean someone else might get through first. Absolutely not. You have principles.
This is how casinos work.
So you stay. Gary counts. Twenty-five. Thirty-five. Forty.
He loses count.
You briefly see the face of God and He appears disappointed.
Then you notice the cashier.
She’s apologizing. Why is she apologizing?
She’s moving quickly, trying to keep everyone happy, answering questions, scanning groceries, dealing with Gary’s numismatic adventure, and somehow maintaining a level of composure you abandoned six minutes ago.
There’s a tiredness in her face you hadn’t noticed because you’ve spent the last several minutes staring at the back of Gary’s head as if enough concentration might cause it to burst into flames.
And suddenly the whole scene looks different.
Nothing has changed. You’re still waiting. Gary is still counting nickels. There may now be a dime involved.
But you’ve stopped seeing the people around you as obstacles.
That’s a small shift. It may also be the entire point.
The Person in Your Way Is Still a Person
Something strange happens when we’re in a hurry. People stop being people.
The driver ahead of you isn’t a father heading home from work. He’s traffic. The woman asking the pharmacist six questions isn’t worried about her medication. She’s the reason this is taking forever. The coworker standing in your doorway isn’t a person who wants to talk. He’s an interruption.
And whoever designed the airport security line is personally responsible for the fall of civilization.
Even the people we love aren’t immune.
Your kid begins telling you a story. You quickly realize this story could have been communicated in forty seconds.
It will not be.
There are characters. There is backstory. Someone named Mason did something at lunch, but understanding what Mason did requires first understanding what Liam said yesterday, which apparently requires a working knowledge of events dating back to second grade.
You have forgotten the original subject. Your child has not.
There may not be an original subject.
And yet, twenty years from now, you’d probably give almost anything to stand in that kitchen and hear the whole ridiculous story again. Including the Mason part.
Perspective has an annoying habit of arriving late.
Maybe This Is the Practice
We often think becoming more patient, attentive, generous, or loving requires finding time to work on those things.
Maybe ordinary life has already scheduled the training.
Unfortunately, it did not consult your calendar.
The slow checkout line. The phone call when you’re trying to leave. The neighbor who starts a conversation while you’re clearly holding six grocery bags. The person who needs something when you’ve finally sat down. The driver merging onto the interstate at the speed of continental drift. The automated customer-service system that says, “I understand you’re frustrated,” which somehow makes you significantly more frustrated.
None of these moments feels spiritually important. That’s probably why they’re so useful.
It’s easy to believe you’re patient when nobody is testing your patience. It’s easy to believe you’re generous when nothing is being asked of you. It’s easy to believe you’re gracious while sitting alone with coffee and a devotional.
Then another human being enters the room.
Formation, unfortunately, involves other people. People who are slow. People who interrupt. People who tell long stories. People who merge badly. People who apparently require assistance inserting a credit card into a machine despite having encountered this technology several thousand times.
People like Gary.
Especially Gary.
Thank God for Gary.
Let’s not get carried away.
But probably.
A Small, Doable Challenge
The next time someone slows you down this week, notice the story you immediately tell yourself about them: Inconsiderate. Clueless. Why are you like this?
Then replace it with one sentence:
This person has a life I know nothing about.
Maybe they’re having a terrible day. Maybe they’re distracted because someone they love is sick. Maybe they’re lonely. Maybe they’re just really, really bad at grocery stores.
You don’t have to know. And you don’t have to become delighted about waiting. You certainly don’t have to watch Gary count pennies and think, What a gift. God has sent me Gary.
Please don’t.
Just try to see the person again instead of the inconvenience.
Because sometimes becoming the person we want to be doesn’t happen during the big moments. Sometimes it happens in the check out aisle, with melting ice cream, behind Gary.
And if Gary pulls out a checkbook?
We’ll cover forgiveness in another Waypoint.
