This morning, it took me one-and-a-half hours to eat two halves of a donut. I say "two halves" because they were, in fact, two halves—one half each of two different cake donuts, because if I'm going to take sub-two hours to eat breakfast, I might as well make it interesting.
This is an exercise in patience, said the voice of God as I used a spoon to cut the spongy dough, powdered sugar flaking off into the bowl. I inwardly rolled my eyes. Haven't I been practicing patience for years—if not for one thing, then for another? It's hard not to feel like a remedial student with that sort of assertion—if said remedial student were in perpetual summer school, which maybe makes sense except it doesn't.
Plus, life doesn't work like that; you can't graduate from patience...or needing to practice it. However, give a student the same math problem over and over, and long division will get kind of irritating. Long division on its own, though? Not so bad, maybe I can even make a game out of it, but the second you tell me it's part of that story problem...well, now dividends and divisors just piss me off.
Except patience isn't a problem to solve, and it's not a class I can "pass." God isn't like that, I remind myself—he's not "holding me back a grade" because I keep coughing on donut dust. Nor, I remind myself, does he take joy in the hacking, nor shake his head impatiently, nor cut open my fresh gum graft further just to promote "more careful" practice.
No, God's ways are not my ways, and I can't reduce him—or his spiritual fruits—to a baked metaphor. Still, for the sake of the argument, I amend myself: the donut has to be eaten; kindness is giving me the tools to eat it.
Am I sick of the tool? Most certainly. But if I were stranded on a deserted island and had a flare gun that was challenging to operate, would I throw it away into the ocean? Most certainly not. My survival outlook appears a lot better if I keep tinkering away with the flare gun. Of course, unbeknownst to me, I'm perfectly safe on the island, I'm as good as rescued; however, in my frantic "lost" state, I'd do a lot better mentally and emotionally if I kept trying to master the tool—even if it's to varying degrees of success. Because throwing away the flare entirely is like giving up hope—and it's not that rescue will cease to come if I do; it's that I might not recognize it when it does.
There might be other promoted tools instead of patience: I could certainly push through the pain of eating so that I get "nourished" faster (side note: these are healthy donuts), the same way I could throw away the flare gun and start swimming to some distant shore because at least I'd be doing something rather than staring at complicated, frustrating mechanics. I could quit eating altogether, stubbornly angry and decidedly starving, the same way I could throw away the flare gun and bury my head in the sand. I might even trade this damn donut for some applesauce—easier to eat but definitely not as filling—in the same way that I might ignore the broken-to-me flare gun in favor of the mechanically simpler method of screaming for help. (...The problem with this being that applesauce is meant to accompany a more satisfying plate, but on its own is certainly not enough, much like screaming ceases to be helpful if you go at it long enough without response, usually prompting you to A) bury your head in the sand or B) swim for shore or C) pick up the flare gun again.)
Patience—ACTIVE patience, because we really are trying to (patiently) understand the way this flare works—is not a simple teaching...who can accept it?
Do you also wish to swim away, bury your head in the sand, scream until you're left with the other options anyways?
No, Lord, where else could I swim? You have the patience of eternal life, of satisfying donuts and deserted island rescues. Getting frustrated by the flare gun's workings is better than throwing hope aside and burying my head in the faith-numbing, wet sediment.
Because I will get frustrated—I am frustrated. I say to whom else can I go and passages (of time) later tell you how to do your ways, prompting you to tell me to put myself behind you, for I am as Satan.
This will be me; this is me. But I am also the one you love, the one you invite and incorporate into and teach your ways, building me up like a rock, promising me donuts and rescue in the first place, fueling my hope even when it's bitter and bloody and suture-torn and healing. I am the one you teach to eat, slowly, the one to whom you reveal the inner mechanics of patience, one missed flare at a time.
There may be other ways, but where would they take me? To whom else can I go? Yours are the ways of one-and-a-half hour breakfasts...
...let them, therefore, be so with me.
Donuts for breakfast, September 2024
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