Gaining Patience Within Family Activities

When I invite my family or friends to my house, I want them to feel a comfortable environment; knowing that I am pleasing individual likes or necessities. Sometimes I think that I sweat it too far. On occasions I have permitted frustration to take over instead of enjoying the moment. I like to gather my family even when it means stress. Each meeting brings lessons to my life…I am still a learner.

After everybody has gone, I always evaluate the activities. The good and bad, the conversation details that were not captured, body language during the activities…oh my…I evaluate almost everything. Why didn’t I do something is not a solution. What has been done, there’s no way back; we can have it in mind for the next event.

I usually have a camera and love to grasp moments. Pictures are used for many reasons; I like them because they could be batteries for the minds when they start forgetting. Pictures help recreate an unseen sight or stop a wonderful moment. They are useful for time comparison, to view before and after.

One of the lessons in the activities is gaining “patience”.

Let me share an activity where without patience, it will never be enjoyed:

I like inviting for barbecues because of many reasons:

One of them (perhaps the best) is that everybody eats and very little mess is left. Using the outdoors also provides for freedom. Walls limit in different aspects; they make me feel kind of claustrophobic when people are around.

The smell of charcoals reminds me of my grandmother’s (RIP) kitchen here in Puerto Rico. My thoughts turn into a butterfly flying back to the past. It is good to review childhood experiences by something that activates a sense (smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch or intuition). That introspection is a delightful moment of memories; actually reminding helps prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurological disease of the brain leading to the irreversible (for science only, not for God) loss of neurons and the lost of intellectual abilities, including memory and reasoning, which becomes severe enough to impede social or occupational functioning. Don't let it get on you...keep a fully active life; read, write, run, walk, dance, jump and have fun. Jeremiah 29:11says:

"For I know the plans that I have for you,'

declares the LORD,

'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."

Patience is the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.

Patience is an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner. Those who have patience are quiet, have steady perseverance and even-tempered care.

Jean Jacques Rousseau quoted:

"Patience is bitter,

but its fruit is sweet."

When do you gain patience in family activities?

1. When you expect everyone to help put things the way you want them.
2. When you want certain meals to be served that others do not.
3. When you thought you had everything and notice that you need something irreplaceable.
4. When what you bought does not work.
5. When nature will not permit the activity to be the way it was planned.

I think you got the idea of what I am exposing here. Everyone has had to experience these situations in one way or the other (the list above is longer).

Gaining patience within family activities ought to be taken not as a misery, but as a learning method for each member. Family activities are necessary to maintain the family together.

There are so many wonderful activities to share with those we love. Cousins, uncles, nephews are not even known these days. Don't let impatience run away the joy found in the patience within the family activities.

Blessings to all and reinforce what patience is with the video below.

© Maria Magdalena Ruiz O'Farrill