Patience. An eight letter word that I like to think I’m not horrible at practicing. I can be patient, especially if the situation requires me to deal with someone that is about two feet tall. I’m even decent at waiting for things to happen. But, I realized recently that I’m not as great at waiting as I would like to believe.
Last Wednesday I started school. I’ve been trying to get back in school for the past several years but because of various circumstances it hasn’t happened. The first problem was my original high school transcripts were messed up so I had never technically graduated. That was fixed after I found an online school that would allow me to go back through and get my diploma. When I applied for college I found out that the school had lost its accreditation and my new transcripts were worthless. Cue my frantic search for a new school that would allow me to do the same thing. I found one and completed High School again. (I’ve done High School three times now) Thankfully, this last one stuck. The problems continued when I spilt tea on my Mac. I’ll be the first to tell you that sweet tea and computers do not mix. After having my Mac fixed twice and it continuing to fail on me I just gave up.
Cue the fake patience I thought I had. I waited and thought I’d just save up money and either buy a new one or try something else to repair the damage. Waiting got old. The majority of my friends are working full time jobs and it felt a lot like I was just existing and watching life pass me by. So I, being foolish, tried to find more schools, just any school that had an online program for Early Childhood. I found several. There were several problems with this; most of those schools were tens of thousands of dollars. I haven’t made enough money in the almost 8 years at MDO together to pay for four years of college at these places. There was also the tiny detail of a broken computer. I’ve got an old Toshiba circa 2008 at least. The video capabilities on it are poor; it freezes often and is prone to getting lagged down with spyware that makes it even slower. In fact it’s the very computer I’m using right now. Which brings me back to my point; many of these online programs are video style classes. Which means my Toshiba is worthless.
This past Black Friday (Yes, I Black Friday shop) I bought a tablet on sale at Verizon for $20 which was the activation fee. Great video quality, it can access the internet, they make keyboards for it. When I got it I told myself that it would be perfect for when I got back to school. The only problem was I had absolutely no clue when that was going to be. I discovered really quickly this past week that it handles school quite nicely. I just use it for the video requirements, anything that needs to be written is done on my laptop and if I need to watch something I use the tablet.
All that to say that there is a reason they say patience is a virtue. After I got accepted I was talking with Gage and realized that starting school now had little to do with me. It wasn’t me taking control of my future. I tried that and failed miserably several times. Starting school now is God’s way of reminding me that He is the one who has everything planned out and all these things that have happened are for a reason . I can fight and wrestle and try to make things go my way and watch everything fall apart, sure. However, it is much easier and far more reassuring to just wait. My God is sovereign. He is not bound by time or my wants. He works for my good and His glory, in His time.
I might not be where I had planned on being but I’m where I need to be. So, for now, I’ll just wait and rest in the fact that God has me where he wants me.
