
It is easy to name wants in the immediate moment. It is hard to take the time to discern whether that want springs from the safest depths of my heart, rather than a shallow place of fear.
With this hard lesson I've received a consolation, though: in patience, I learn the difference between fear and love. I learn their respective shapes and signals and sounds. I learn how to be the person God imagines me to be, rather than the person I imagine myself to be.
I am so much lovelier and wonder-full than I would imagine myself to be. Patience grants me the gift of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching the horizon of wonder that is my small life--through God's eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands.