A virtue missing

Among the virtues that some people have, there is at least one I missed.

Patience

I don’t even come close.

Perhaps it’s genetic?

My father was a pretty impatient guy. My mother’s patience came in tolerating his impatience.

But my own lack of it was sorely tested when addiction crept into our home late in Jacob’s high school years.
I was having none of it.

Why couldn’t he pick up anything in his room? The floor was littered with tossed tee shirts, socks, crumpled notebook papers, gum wrappers, soda cans, a scrunched-up McDonald’s bag.

Why was he failing history? English? He loved those courses. How hard was it for him to submit his assignments on time?
And when it became clear what the problem was, I couldn’t understand, why didn’t he just stop?

Just stop.

When we dropped him off at his first treatment center, I was certain, this was it. The pastoral setting, its spiritual embrace, surely here he would get well – on schedule – within 28 days.

But addiction doesn’t know a schedule.
And an impatient mother doesn’t help.

What did help was Al-Anon. At first, sitting in kindergarten chairs in that church basement, my patience got tested. Why did some people talk so long? Why didn’t others speak up?

Over months the program’s calming message and words of hope from others ahead of me stayed my tapping foot, calmed the urge to speed up the time Jacob was using, to get to the end of it, to bring back my son.

Recently, a friend shared her own impatience with her son whose substance abuse tests her sanity. She offered this phrase…
Time takes time.

Time…takes time.

Thanks to Jacob’s recovery and mine, I am still working on patience.

I just wish it wouldn’t take so long.