Impatience is a besetting sin of American culture. We like our food "fast" and even when we're at a sit-down restaurant, by golly, the service better be fast. Banks, restaurants, pharmacies, even photo and video stores have "drive-thru" because we cannot spare the time to get out of our cars and go in. And chances are, I'm one of those people in the long line at the drive thru.

I deal with my own impatience more often than I like. I even get impatient with my impatience. I've been working on three different prayer shawls for over a year now. I pick them up and work on them from time to time, and have been impatient with myself for my "lack of progress" (i.e., they're not done yet).

Until today. When I had a moment of clarity.

I was knitting one of the prayer shawls today, praying under my breath as I knitted each stitch, and as I was sitting there, knitting, I realized a deep insight into the discipline, the devotion even, of patience.

Before today I thought of being patient as a calm, wait-until-it's-my-turn state of mind, which is the beginning of patience, and useful, but that's not the whole picture.

Today, while I was knitting, I experienced patience not as a way of being but as a place to be within. Instead of "being" patient, I felt like I was "being IN patience". And I realized that the length of time it takes me to make a prayer shawl is one of the lessons (or opportunities) I have been given to understand the power of patience. Fretting about how long it takes to make something doesn't get it done any faster, it just makes my blood pressure rise. And I'm going to need to practice patience in the months ahead.

I need to "be in patience" while my husband and I choose an adoption agency. I've been asking him to come to a decision with me about which of the agencies we've interviewed that we want to apply to, but he's not ready to make a decision yet. In order for us to make this next step with grace (and harmoniously), I must "be in patience" and trust his process.

Once we choose an agency, I will need to "be in patience" while the homestudy is underway. The homestudy will take months. And after that, when we seek to be matched with children, it will be weeks before we hear back from the powers-that-be.

Patience is a necessary a skill to cultivate at any stage in one's life, but especially so when undertaking adoption. Patience is an act of trust. I must trust the process of adoption to bring into our home the children we are meant to care for and raise. Patience is an act of love. I both experience and express love through patience and kindness, just like the verse that was read during our wedding ceremony explains. It makes me a better life partner, a better mother, a better friend, a better person.

I've moved from an intellectual understanding of patience to a deeper level of knowing. A feeling in my body of ease and stillness, a space that I can occupy and dwell in that will sustain me and our family as we wait...and wait...and wait...for the slow wheels of the adoption process to move us along the path.

And I am grateful.

To the fiber enthusiasts, for the prayer shawls that I'm knitting I'm using Lion's Brand Wool-Ease, Fisherman color, on size 10 circular needles, trinity stitch pattern from Knitting into the Mystery.