Patience and Discipleship

I love Elder Uchtdorf's talk, "The Way of the Disciple". I was tempted to dump the whole thing onto the blog. I may end up doing it in bits and pieces in different categories. But since my life seems to be keenly focused on teaching me to have patience, I'll start with this:

Brothers and sisters, we have to stay with it. We don’t acquire eternal life in a sprint—this is a race of endurance. We have to apply and reapply the divine gospel principles. Day after day we need to make them part of our normal life.
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Discipleship is a journey. We need the refining lessons of the journey to craft our character and purify our hearts. By patiently walking in the path of discipleship, we demonstrate to ourselves the measure of our faith and our willingness to accept God’s will rather than ours.

-Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Way of the Disiple," Conference Report, April 2009.

This also reminded me of Elder Lynn G. Robbin's talk, "What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be?" He said:

Many of us create to do lists to remind us of things we want to accomplish. But people rarely have to be lists. Why? To do’s are activities or events that can be checked off the list when done. To be, however, is never done. You can’t earn checkmarks with to be’s. I can take my wife out for a lovely evening this Friday, which is a to do. But being a good husband is not an event; it needs to be part of my nature—my character, or who I am.

-Conference Report, April 2011

That's the problem with trying to develop character traits like patience: by definition you are never done! If you ever stop acting patiently, you are no longer patient. So the lesson is never-ending and will never be over (until your life is over, anyway). Talk about a trial for an impatient person!