Love is patient...love is kind…

Kim is impatient...Kim is mean...Ok, alright, not all the time. But it is so stinking easy to let little nit-picky things ruin your whole day, and therefore the day of those in close proximity to you. You see…I am an early riser, and once I rise I go. I do dishes, laundry, dust, wipe, swipe, tidy, email, blog, smog, flog…you get the picture. I am basically turning into my mother. I say that with much pride. But I have to consciously sit down and relax from time to time, and doing so causes me to have ants in my pants.

When other non anty-panty people I live with are doing CRAZY things like, ya know, sleeping past 7, or worse...playing video games, reading books, or watching TV, I start having intrusive thoughts about…well…how shall I say…

…how generally lazy and useless they are, and how generally productive and awesome I am…

…there I said it. While I fully realize how hideous and inaccurate this is, these are the thoughts that plague me in my anty-panty hustle bustle none the less. Mind you, I called them intrusive thoughts for a reason. Because I would never admit that these are actual thoughts that originate in my own conscious brain. I’d rather like to think that they are being put in my mind by some supernatural force, Satan himself perhaps?? He doesn’t have anything better to do but telepathically zap me while I fold underwear on a Saturday morning right?

This brings me back to the patient and kind thingy, a well-known start to a series of verses from the Bible read at almost every wedding in America. We’ve all heard it. It outlines all the things love is…and it sounds so wonderful. What it also does is describe love as an action, not a feeling or an emotion. I honestly can’t remember much of the rest of the verses, but just those first two adjectives pretty well keep me busy and encompass what I need to work on most of the time.

The reason why I love principles like this is because it simplifies things so much if you really think about it. As stated earlier, I can definitely be impatient and mean (as evidenced by the use of the word ‘useless’ in the description above when referring to the people I am supposed to ‘love’ most in this world). BUT…if I am supposed to be patient and kind if I say I LOVE someone, well then, I guess I better fake it till I make it!! Don't look at me like that! Just keep reading :)

How this unfolded this morning was that instead of marching up the stairs with laundry basket in hand and announcing to the world at large in a slightly elevated tone that they could ‘MAYBE THINK ABOUT GETTING OFF THEIR LAZY BUTTS AND HELPING ME OUT' (the totally intuitive, human, take care of #1 thing to do), I left the basket downstairs, got 2 cups of coffee, walked upstairs and gave my husband one and sat on the bed and chit chatted for a minute (patient). Then...perfectly calmly, and with a sexy grin, I told him that instead of carrying the laundry basket upstairs, I opted for his coffee (kind) where he promptly jumped up and went downstairs to get the basket and started helping with the laundry without even being asked...huh!

I actually marched up the stairs repeating ‘patient and kind, patient and kind’ in my head over and over. This is something I have been trying lately. You see, when you repeat thoughts and actions over and over, even when they are not what you wanted to do initially (this is the 'faking it' part), something amazing happens…your feelings and emotions actually catch up (this is the 'making it' part, see? Not nearly as sinister as it sounded!). By the time I got upstairs I actually WANTED to be patient and kind and sit on the bed and drink coffee for a minute and enjoy my husband’s smiling face.

So…

[CAUTION: About to get preachy…]

You know what Biblical principles like this remind me of? Essential oils. Any oil user/lover out there will get this…we are ALWAYS so surprised when they WORK!! And how WELL they work!! The things in the Bible seem so counter-intuitive sometimes (most of the time) and like we are betraying our very selves, being archaic in our thinking, etc. But the fact of the matter is, those principles are the path to husbands jumping off the bed and running downstairs to get the laundry basket without being asked!!

It’s really quite self-serving if you think about it, but from the outset it seems self-sacrificing. This is actually the beauty in it. It meets the needs of everyone involved, and this is why it is so superior to anything we can come up with on our own. I guess that is why He is God and we are not. Applying these types of principles have never NOT worked for me. And yet, I choose selfish, bad behavior some of the time too, because what can I say? I am a work in progress.
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So…today, do the counter intuitive thing. Love is patient, love is kind…think about what that really looks like and put it into action. You might not believe the results.