In my internship class, we are reading Elder Bednar's book Increase In Learning. We read it for homework, and then we discuss in class how it applies to our lives and the lives of our clients.
I'm not going to lie... it's a pretty deep book. Lots to learn and consider. But I love discussing it with my classmates and teacher. I learn a lot as people talk about their experiences and how what we're reading applies to them. It's awesome. Today, we were discussing Chapter 3: "Prayerful Inquiry: Asking, Seeking, and Knocking." It's a kind of timely discussion for me. As I approach graduation, I still have no idea what I'm doing with my life and that's a little scary. I've definitely been praying about it, but I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do. And reading this chapter made me think about approaching my prayers in a different way. To be more active in my prayers and doing my part. The Lord isn't going to help me if I don't help myself. He's not just going to give me a job that I don't search and apply for. I mean... I already knew that, but I definitely haven't been acting in that as much as I should. And so that idea definitely stood out to me as I read the chapter over the weekend.
But what struck me the most in class today was when somebody pointed out that there was a quote from the book that said, "The persistence highlighted in the preceding verses should be complemented with patience and long-suffering." In my personal reading of the chapter, I hadn't caught that. So when my classmate started talking about what that meant I was dumbstruck by it. I actually took the discussion back to that because it seriously blew my mind and I needed to discuss it further.
In my mind, persistence and patience have always been on completely opposite sides of the spectrum. You do one or the other. Never both. I'm either pursuing something relentlessly or I'm sitting around and doing nothing (which is sometimes how I think of patience... even though I know that's not right). It's very dichotomous to me. But that's not actually how it works. We're supposed to be patient AND persistent. At the same time. They WORK TOGETHER! This is a total and complete paradigm shift for me. I don't get how this works. How can I do both?
But as I thought about it more, I realized that I already do in some ways. In a silly example, I have already started to do this in dating. I found that I was either super persistent in pursuing certain boys or doing nothing ("being patient" as I waited for guys to come and pursue me). But this year, because I was sick of how my dating life was going, I set a goal to on a date a month. This has forced me to get out of my comfort zone a bit and be a bit persistent in some ways. But I also know to be patient in knowing that the timing may not be right for what I want to have happen. I need to do my part (persistence), but I need to trust in the Lord to do His part (patience, as I "wait on the Lord").
This also fits in with my clients. Lots of them have been doing the same thing over and over and over (persistence), but then they give up because it's not working. Or they sit around doing nothing ("patience") without doing their part to make it better. They need both the persistence and the patience working together to make effective life changes.
This also fits into my life as I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing after graduation. I can't just sit around and expect that a job is going to fall into my lap ("patience"). I need to be actively looking for jobs, networking, and applying (persistence). It can be discouraging, but that's where the patience comes in. Not finding the perfect job I'm envisioning when I'm doing my part may mean that I need to wait a bit longer to find that job. Or it might mean that maybe what I think would be the perfect job may not actually be the perfect job and I need to expand my horizons a bit. The patience and persistence work together.
This may seem like a silly blog post because I really don't think this idea is as big to other people as it is to me. The rest of my classmates actually seemed kind of amused that this was such a big deal to me. Nobody probably understands why my mind has been blown as I realized this and as I'm trying to figure out how it all fits together. (I still don't even get why this was such a big deal to me.) I mean, it's such a basic concept, but it really hit me today for some reason... so I thought I'd share.
But seriously. Whoa.
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