First Pete went down with the flu, then our son.
After that, our son had pneumonia.

It felt like a long stretch, yet it was just the beginning.

Throughout that entire time, our daughter was coughing.

What began as a benign, common cold type cough continued to worsen in severity and consistency.

We took her in.

Pertussis. Aka whooping cough.

Blast!

While the math we worked on put both my girl and me in tears, this suggestion from our homeschool consultant was radical.

Shouldn’t we just push through?

Yet we were both beat; and frankly a break sounded like a blessing.

I chose to trust our consultant, and we put the math away.

Patience.

​The simplest definition I know is “waiting with a happy heart.”*

A more complex one, “accepting a difficult situation without giving a deadline to remove it.”**

No matter how it’s defined, patience is a difficult requirement of life and of motherhood.

Here’s another story to illustrate…