Chapter 20 – “Don’t make me wait for anything; I deserve everything immediately.”

Wilderness Mentality #5

I don’t think I realized that I felt this way. Perhaps because I CAN wait when I know the outcome or have a general knowledge of an expected timeline. And certainly, if someone leads me to believe in an outcome, I have something to look forward to. Even our Heavenly Father has promised Heaven to us if we look to His Son, Jesus, for our Salvation.

But apparently I become a blithering idiot when I’m led to believe in a certain outcome and then … nothing … happens … ever … within my anticipated timeline. I’m goal-oriented. If I do this, then I achieve that.

Perhaps I could identify better with this mentality if it went something like, “Don’t withhold from me that which I have worked towards; I deserve it.” And lest I get called on it, Wilderness Mentality #5b, “Don’t make me wait.”

It all boils down to Pride and Patience. Patience will go first. It is not that you wait. It is how you wait that matters. Your attitude is what will please God. If you wait in the checkout line for eons, but grumble in your head the entire time, you are not pleasing the Father. God wants you to let someone else go before you and be happy about it. Praise the Father that you have the time to generously give to someone else.

Here’s my sin … control … if I willingly give up my time, I can patiently and happily endure it. When someone else wastes my time, I’m a raging lunatic. Notice the semantics: give versus waste. In the last couple of weeks God has been telling me that one of my gifts is time … that’s not true, I’ve known that time was a gift … but God has been telling me that I need to give thanks for the fact that I can be so flexible with it. Others are not so blessed. If I couldn’t be so flexible, a lot of things would never be able to happen. God is working on my attitude. He wants me to think, “no matter how my time is used, I will praise Him cheerfully for it.”

Pride. That’s the “I deserve” part, or the “I don’t deserve to be treated that way” part. Each of us has very limited ability to see beyond ourselves. We are intimate with our own minds, thoughts. If we are so buried, drowned, in ourselves, we cannot possibly see others. It’s very hard to put ourselves in others’ shoes.

Once upon a time, in my first job, I supervised the library I was at and its employees. I had a quarter-time, retired, elderly nurse that worked nights. She was a Pollack too and proud of it. I saw her perhaps 30 minutes a week. That’s 15 minutes in two days. One day she came in, and I was obviously in a distressed or foul mood. She asked me what she had done to put me in such a mood! She was sincerely concerned. I was astounded. I looked at her and said something along the lines of, how can you possibly think that you can affect my moods? I see you such an infinitesimally small amount of time. And you think that you occupy a space in my thoughts?

I need to switch that around in my head. When I feel like somebody has ignored me or denied me, I need to put myself in that same frame of mind. I probably don’t even enter that person’s thoughts beyond they saw my face. They have enough on their table without me to deal with.

They only one that thinks about me is me. That’s pride. I need to think less about me and more about the Father. And what’s on the Father’s mind? Love. Always love. For this world at its people. Christ’s mind was always on the Father and therefore always on others.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4 (ESV)