There’s an age-old saying that says “patience is a virtue.” However, God skipped the boat with me on that front. Sometimes I can feel the frustration boiling up to where my lid could blow a hole through the roof. I know my voice can suddenly shoot up to screaming in a second. This has been a flaw of mine since I can remember.

Through all of this, God decided in His infinite wisdom that I could handle a blond hair, Caribbean blue-eyed beautiful little girl who happened to have severe classic autism. Are you thinking yet, “What in the world was God thinking?” If you aren’t that’s okay because I probably did it enough for all of us. Someone with little to no patience should never raise a child with autism, or at least that’s what I thought. Yet, like usual, God knows more than I do (imagine that). Because He gave Keith and I Mari, my patience slowly began to grow. Did it become spectacular over night? Yea right. Not even close. But it did grow.

I became better at seeing my frustration with Mari and knowing when to step back. Then Mari died. My beloved little girl. God was preparing me for the road that would lie ahead of me. On July 17, 2011, my niece Crysta and my nephew Trevin came out for a two-week visit. This was exactly one day after Mari’s three-year mark of being gone. Then Crysta left on my birthday and Athena flew out with both her and Trevin never going back to live with their mom or dad (my brother). We were awarded full legal guardianship of both of them. Since being in our lives, things had changed for Keith and I quite drastically – again. Both of them didn’t come from the greatest background. There had been issues along the way which, of course, lead us right back to where I was with Mari and having so little patience but now we add in Keith, as his all went away the day our daughter died as well.

When both of them were here, and even now that we only have Athena, we are good for each other. When one needed some time to cool down the other seemed to have the patience needed and vice versa. Since the kids came, I’d been able to better calm myself than in the past.

Now we only have Athena. With her, I might start off yelling but I’ve been slowly learning to calm myself down quicker. Also, I apologize to her if I do yell and tell her that she doesn’t deserve to be yelled at no matter what she has done. She can’t control my actions any more than I can control hers.

So with writing it’s the same thing. We have to be patient. When the time comes to write, we will write. When the time comes to submit to agents or publishing houses, we will submit. We just have to be patient and wait for God to tell us the right time instead of trying to take control and learning the hard way to just wait.