To Practice Patience

We've always talked about expanding our family, and on our second wedding anniversary we finally commited to the idea. We thought it would happen in the next couple of months, as easily as everything else we had set our minds to achieve. But a few months later, it became clear that in fact we were facing some kind of infertility. We were obviously disappointed and in disbelief; our plans were being derailed and we had no control over the situation.

In the dispair of that realization, two things echoed in my mind: hard decisions, and patience. I could handle challenging decisions anytime but could not just "be" patient. Contrary to what everyone believes, I think patience is only the final state of a deliberate process -- that you can't just go there. So I resolved to pursue patience as a means of dealing not only with infertility, but with other challenges that will come my way.

So how do you actually practice patience? The list below isn't the gold standard or comprehensive, but it has been tremendous in helping me achieving patience.

1. Learn God's truth. I find Matt.6:25-34 helpful in dealing with worry. Hab.2:3, Psa.24:17, Eccl.8:6, and the discourse in Gen.18:14 show me that there is a time for everything and that God is in control. Thus the anthems of my prayers have been to not be anxious and to trust in God's timing. Really, whatever His will, it will happen.
   
2. Be patient with yourself. I am used to getting things done in a predictable manner and able to compensate for reasonable deviations. For this situation though, I cannot beat myself up for somehow having missed the mark. So I resist urges to quickly develop or implement plan B or plan C or plan D (which I usually have, by the way). I literally never start doing anything big without a couple of backup plans.
   
3. Be patient with your spouse. There will be the temptation to blame your spouse, but you can always see this coming from a mile away. So the attitude to adopt right away is: infertility is our problem together, no matter who it is manifesting itself in. I now understand why some couples would rather not know who between them is responsible for their infertility.
   
4. Have hope. Faith without hope is a miserable state of being. You gain faith by knowledge, which in turn increases your faith. But an interesting by-product of the faith-knowledge cycle is hope. With hope derived from a strong and credible foundation, you can make it through anything.
   
5. Educate yourself. How do you actually "have hope"? Learn the truths of God's Word in your situation, and let them increase your faith (combines #1 and #4 above). But also learn as much as you can about your situation. I started with a simple "human infertility" Google search and read medical articles and research papers, as well as other people's experiences and opinions, on what can possibly lead to infertility. All that knowledge amounted to the hope that there is a way out of our situation, and that it is not as bad as we were imagining.
   
6. Isolate your laundry. Beware that the smallest of challenges can spill all over and stain the rest of your life. So we made deliberate efforts to keep fertility problems in their place and proceed with the rest of our marriage normally. Otherwise it was emotionally draining and beginning affecting our day-to-day life.

To achieve patience, you therefore must tame your worry and anxiety, exercise patience with yourself and your spouse, and foster hope from faith and knowledge of God's truths and the particulars of your situation. Surprisingly, I've also felt a certain peace and calm while I have practiced patience.