Erekh ’Appayim: The Permission to Be Patient

 “But the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

— Galatians 5:22, AMP

The Permission to Be Patient

There is something rather appropriate about writing a piece about patience and finding that it is taking me quite a while to put together. In fact, putting this article together has felt a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

I have pieces of information I have gathered over many years. Some are fresh. Some are things I learned a long time ago but which have become relevant again. Some are experiences. Some are things I have observed in other people. Some are scientific. Some are biblical.

I don't have the whole picture in front of me, so I am having to be patient with myself while I work out which pieces belong together.

Perhaps that is a good place to start.

Patience is a choice.

But I think it is more than simply choosing to wait. Sometimes it is choosing to give ourselves room to breathe. To allow a process time to do what it needs to do. To accept that we don't have the answer immediately — and, perhaps more importantly, to recognise that we don't always need the answer immediately.

Sometimes we need to put some time and distance between ourselves and the problem so that we can think.

What Does Patience Actually Mean?

We often use the word patience to mean being able to wait. Wait in the queue. Wait for the traffic. Wait for the email. Wait for the opportunity. Wait for the person who is late. Wait for the garden to grow. Wait for life to work itself out.

And waiting is certainly part of it.

But I think that definition is incomplete.

The Greek word used in Galatians 5:22 is makrothymia. It is commonly translated as patience, but it can also be translated as longsuffering, forbearance or longanimity. The King James Version uses the word longsuffering: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering...”

I actually think “longsuffering” tells us something that the modern word “patience” can sometimes hide.

Not because suffering is somehow good. It isn't.

Life can be genuinely painful. There are things we go through that are uncomfortable, difficult and sometimes deeply painful.

But discomfort isn't necessarily bad.

Learning something new is uncomfortable. Changing is uncomfortable. Waiting is uncomfortable. Being challenged is uncomfortable. Growth is often uncomfortable.

And perhaps we have become so accustomed to avoiding discomfort that we have forgotten that not all discomfort needs to be immediately removed.

There is another beautiful biblical expression in Hebrew: ’erekh ’appayim, usually translated “slow to anger”. Literally, it carries the image of being “long of nose” or “long of nostrils” — an ancient Hebrew picture connected to the idea of anger and the flaring of the nostrils.

I like that image.

It makes patience less about simply sitting around waiting and more about how quickly we react.

How quickly do I become angry? How quickly do I panic? How quickly do I decide? How quickly do I respond? How quickly do I close down the possibilities?

Perhaps patience is partly about giving ourselves enough space between what happens to us and what we decide to do about it.

We Need Space to Think

There is good scientific reason to take this seriously. When we experience acute stress, our attention and thinking can become more focused on immediate threats and rapid responses. That can make some of the functions we need for working memory, cognitive flexibility, problem-solving and deliberate decision-making more difficult to access.

That doesn't mean our emotions are bad. Our emotional and threat-detection systems are incredibly useful. If a car is coming towards me, I don't need to patiently analyse the situation for five minutes. I need to move.

There are times when patience is not only unnecessary — it can be dangerous.

The question, therefore, isn't simply, “Can I wait?”

It is, “Should I wait?”

That is where wisdom and discretion enter the picture. Patience without discernment can become passivity. Patience without wisdom can become avoidance, and patience without courage can become fear.

Sometimes the wise response is to wait. Sometimes it is to speak or act. Sometimes it is to walk away, and sometimes it is to run.

Patience is therefore not simply about waiting longer. It is about creating enough space to make an informed choice about what the moment requires.

And that distinction matters because patience should never require us to surrender our agency.

The Space Between the News and the Response

I recently experienced this in a very real way.

I received some genuinely good news and, within a few minutes, received information that could quite easily have sent me into a panic. The situation was serious, and I knew that handling it badly could potentially make things much worse.

But I also realised that I didn't need to act in that moment. I could put some time and distance between myself and the problem, allowing the first emotional reaction to settle before deciding what needed to happen next.

There was another reason I chose to pause. I had just received really good news, and that doesn't happen every day. I wanted to enjoy it, celebrate it and allow myself to experience the positive emotions that came with it. Why should difficult news immediately steal the good news?

So I stayed with that moment for a while, appreciating it before stepping out to confront the problem.

The next day I unpacked the situation logically. Experience has taught me something that has become increasingly valuable: there is often a solution, even when I cannot see it yet. So I allowed time for a proper solution to materialise. It took a few days before things started coming together and several weeks before everything was fully resolved.

It wasn't easy. I was still on an emotional roller coaster, but I was able to manage the situation and manage my emotions rather than allowing them to manage me.

There were also moments when I had to acknowledge how far I had come. Earlier in my career, I don't think I would have handled the situation nearly as well. That doesn't mean I wasn't affected; I was. Working the negative feelings out of my body wasn't easy or quick, and it took time to find my way back into a different state of mind.

I started doing some motor mechanics on my vehicle, partly because I enjoy learning something new and partly because complicated practical problems challenge me. I was learning a new aspect of vehicle maintenance, using tools in ways I hadn't used them before and working through a problem I hadn't solved before. Something shifted. My mind moved into a creative, problem-solving state, and the anxiety I had been carrying reduced dramatically.

Sometimes we don't need to solve the problem immediately. Sometimes we first need to get ourselves into a state where we are capable of solving it.

And sometimes, perhaps, the most important thing we can do is make sure that we remain the person making the decision.

Patience Is a Muscle

This is why I think patience needs to be practised. We don't simply decide one morning that from today we are going to be patient people. It doesn't work that way.

Patience is more like a muscle. It develops through use. We learn by watching other people. We learn by being placed in situations that require patience. We learn by experiencing those situations repeatedly. And, hopefully, we learn by being given increasingly difficult situations in which to practise.

In that sense, patience is a little like solving puzzles.

I love puzzles. My grandmother loved them too, and I remember doing a couple of puzzle projects with her when I was younger. I think that is probably where my love of puzzles began.

Today I see puzzles everywhere. The educational games I play with children at camp often involve puzzles. Some have a picture to work towards. Some don't.

Sometimes I give children a collection of pieces and tell them simply to build a square. There is no picture to copy. There is only the shape. That requires a different kind of thinking.

Recently, my younger daughter was working on some old puzzles that her older sister had given her. She was struggling, and when I started sorting through the pieces with her, I realised something important.

There were pieces missing.

The puzzle was impossible.

It didn't matter how patient she was. She could not complete a puzzle when too many of the pieces simply weren't there.

And perhaps life is sometimes like that.

We become frustrated because we can't see how everything fits together. But perhaps we don't have all the pieces yet. Perhaps the missing piece is still coming. Perhaps we haven't developed the skill we need. Perhaps we haven't met the person we need to meet. Perhaps the opportunity hasn't arrived. Perhaps we aren't ready.

Or perhaps we have a piece that doesn't belong and need the wisdom to recognise that it isn't part of our picture.

Life Isn't a Puzzle in a Box

In my early twenties, I created a lot of business plans and very defined visions for what I wanted my life to become. I thought life was something I could map out, but life eventually taught me otherwise.

Life isn't a puzzle that comes in a box with a picture on the front and every piece neatly included. It is much more organic, more like a garden.

You might have an idea of what you want to grow, but then life happens. Some things are your choice and some aren't. People come into your life and people leave. Economic conditions change. Circumstances change. Sometimes you wait too long and an opportunity closes, and sometimes you have to find another route.

Sometimes a piece goes missing. Sometimes you discover that a piece you thought belonged to your puzzle doesn't belong at all. And sometimes you have to make another piece.

Most of the goals I have set for myself have eventually materialised. They simply didn't materialise on the dates I originally wanted them to. There are still some big ones outstanding, but I'm working towards them.

I've realised that some of those things simply couldn't happen earlier because I didn't yet have all the pieces. I needed to build the skills, gather the resources, learn the lessons and develop the capacity.

That isn't failure.

Sometimes it is simply time doing its work.

Perhaps We Need Permission

We live in a world that seems increasingly obsessed with speed. We are constantly encouraged to decide, act, buy, build, scale and achieve as quickly as possible.

We are surrounded by images of other people's lives and can easily mistake those images for instructions about how our own lives should look.

Social media, television, advertising and even the people around us constantly give us pictures of what success is supposed to look like. Because we are human, we compare. We see something we admire and want it. We see someone's success and want to reproduce it.

Eventually those images can become expectations, and those expectations can begin to influence decisions that perhaps aren't really ours.

This is where I think patience becomes particularly important.

We should not allow the speed of the world to determine the speed at which we make decisions about our own lives.

We should not allow systems, society, other people or circumstances to pressure us into making decisions simply because somebody else believes the decision needs to be made now.

Sometimes the most intentional thing we can say is, “Let me think about it.”

Sometimes it is, “Can I get back to you?”

Sometimes it is simply saying no.

And sometimes it is a decision to draft the email but leave it unsent until tomorrow. To write the article but wait before pressing publish. To sleep on the decision. To take a walk. To breathe. To allow some distance between ourselves and whatever is demanding an immediate response.

I use machines every day. Computers, technology and AI are incredibly useful tools. They help me organise my thoughts, find mistakes and turn rough ideas into something I can share.

But the tools are binary.

I'm not.

I'm organic. You're organic. And organic things don't always develop according to a fixed schedule.

A garden doesn't care what date you put on the business plan. A cake doesn't care about your five-year strategy. A relationship doesn't necessarily respond to your deadline. A person doesn't become who they are supposed to become simply because somebody else thinks they should be there already.

Perhaps we need to give ourselves permission to be patient with the process, with ourselves and with the decisions we are making.

That doesn't mean becoming passive or indecisive. It means remaining grounded enough to choose deliberately rather than allowing pressure to choose for us.

Patience creates space. And sometimes that space is where our agency lives.

The Fruit Needs Companions

This brings me back to the Fruit Collection.

The fruit of the Spirit is described as love, joy, peace, makrothymia, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The different fruits make a beautiful fruit salad. But sometimes, when you add a few more ingredients, you get something different. You get a smoothie.

A strawberry is delicious on its own and has value on its own. But put that strawberry together with other ingredients and you create something different — something that can be even more nourishing, useful and enjoyable.

I think patience is like that.

Patience is valuable, but patience with wisdom is different. Patience with discretion is different. Patience with discernment is different. Patience with self-control is different. Patience with kindness is different.

The fruit is important, but the companions help us understand how to use the fruit.

And perhaps that is the point. Patience isn't simply about waiting. It is about making a choice, and making that choice with enough calm, wisdom and information to understand what the moment requires.

Sometimes patience means waiting. Sometimes it means acting. Sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it means asking for more information. Sometimes it means giving yourself another day before making a decision that could affect the next several years of your life.

The important thing is that the decision remains yours.

Be Still

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Perhaps being still isn't always about doing nothing. Perhaps sometimes it is about creating enough space to remember who we are, who God is, and that we don't have to solve everything in this particular moment.

For me, there is something deeply important about that pause.

Stop. Breathe. Be still. Then choose.

Not because we are giving up control, but because we are refusing to give our agency away to panic, pressure, expectation or somebody else's timetable.

As a Christian, I find comfort in knowing that I don't stand alone in that space. There is a higher power behind me, and I can trust God while I take the time to think and choose wisely.

If Christianity isn't your framework, perhaps you understand that space differently. Perhaps you call it God, Source, the universe, conscience, wisdom or simply the quiet place within yourself where you can think clearly.

The language may differ, but the principle remains: we don't have to surrender our ability to choose simply because the world is demanding an immediate answer.

So, Everyday Maverick, perhaps the question isn't simply, “How patient am I?”

Perhaps the better question is:

“What does this moment require of me?”

Do I need to act, speak, walk away or ask for more time? Do I need to breathe, take a step back and allow time to do some of the work?

Because sometimes the answer isn't missing.

Sometimes the pieces just haven't arrived yet.

And whatever we choose to do as Everyday Mavericks, perhaps the most important thing is that we do it with intention.

A Thought to Take With You

Everyday Mavericks is not here to give you a to-do list, a blueprint, or the final answer. It is a template — a starting point for thought, conversation and exploration.

I don't write as the final authority on any subject. I share what I've learned, experienced and observed, along with some of the things I'm still trying to understand.

So take it further. Question it. Challenge it. Research it. Fact-check it. Have a conversation about it. Work out what it means for you and build your own framework.

And if there is something I've missed, a perspective I haven't considered, or something you think would add value to the Everyday Mavericks community, please add your voice in the comments.

Perhaps you've experienced patience differently. Perhaps you've learned something I haven't. Perhaps you simply have a question that someone else has been waiting for somebody to ask.

Throw it into the conversation.

The work doesn't have to end when you reach the bottom of the page.

It might just be where the conversation begins.

Moving Forward

Live curiously.
Lead courageously.
Life is worth living.

The Everyday Mavericks keep moving forward with intention.

Shalom.

 Read: The Disco Ball Life: Learning to See Goodness, Kindness, and Gentleness