Patience

Several years ago I worked at the Green Mill with a gal named Patience.  We became friends but after I quit working there, we didn't keep in touch.  I wonder, if my name was Patience, would it help?  Would I have a daily reminder to embrace this virtue, this gift which is "fruit" from the spirit of God?  Or would it become so... comfortable, so "normal," that I would forget what it means?

Excerpt from my devotion today, written by Barbara Bush, on the topic of patience:
"Patience is a more positive trait.  It is the ability to bear affliction, delay and interruption with calmness, perseverance and confidence in the goodness of God.  It is inward peace as well as outward control.  It is the submission of our schedules, our viewpoints, our dreams to the greater plan of God, with the conviction that he has a good reason for every delay he allows to come our way."

And we pray this in order that you may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  Colossians 1: 10-12