JANUARY 5, 2020

"An Uncommon Woman,"

by Laura Franz

One of the first tests of the new year is patience:

Kind people surrounded us when my husband went in for a biopsy, laughing with us, informing us, doing their due diligence in their professions.  Now, we need patience to wait for the result.  Then when we got home, I spent the next few hours on the phone.  In the days prior, the phone numbers I was given only allowed me to talk to a computer who was unable to process my requests: artificial unintelligence.  Finally, I was able to speak with a real live person, actually five different persons as one after the other was unable to answer my questions and referred me on.  I had to use a lot of patience as most were extremely hard to understand since it was obvious that English was not their native tongue.  Error after errors were made as they evidently were not able to understand me either.  Patience.  I had to take a lot of deep breaths.  When did I become a person who felt like yelling at strangers on the phone?

Then the mail came with a book by one of my favorite authors with whom I correspond on Facebook, Laura Franz.  It was a gift, an early copy before it is released to the public.  For the first time in a long time, I decided to read aloud to my husband so we could both enjoy it at the same time.  All the frustration of the day melted away as we savored her book of historical fiction set in the 1770's in West Virginia.  Guess what?  The lives of these characters had it extremely more difficult than mine, even though they never had to speak on the phone with a computer.  I highly recommend the book, "An Uncommon Woman."   

As we read, we took out the trusty atlas and looked up exactly where the story took place.  It was near where we were privileged to travel a few years back.  In fact, I gave my husband a reproduction oil of these mountains for Christmas as a reminder of that wonderful trip.  (I found it at Pier 1 on sale, reduced down to $4.00.  Score!)

So in the muck of frustration, I was blessed in spite of my gritted teeth-barely hanging on to patience.  In perspective, I am reminded not to sweat the small stuff.  Love is patient, love is kind. (I Corinthians 13:4)   I want to be like Jesus.