The Power of Patience

Yesterday, Brien visited Grace and spent a couple hours gardening around her site. He cleared out dead grass and weeds, planted new grass seed, and was even able to aerate the grass with a special little tool that he made. He did all of this just in time before the rain started yesterday. Rain is forecasted here for the next several days. We know that with care, time, and much patience, new grass will grow again and replace those spots that have perished. I have been thinking a lot this week about lessons Grace has taught us about the power of patience.

Back in June, before she was even born, Brien and I made a huge decision that would greatly affect our personal and business lives. We decided to move our office location in order to expand, be able to offer more services, and be closer to home. Being entrenched in our local community was a very important factor in this decision as well. After a short time spent looking at few different places, we found the one that fit us the best almost immediately. Then, we researched whether buying or leasing the office space would make the most sense for us. Again, our decision was largely based on wanting to be closely involved in the community and also the fact that the office was near our home. We decided that the office would definitely work for our business for the long term and went forward with the process of purchasing the space.

In the meantime, Grace was born and as you know, several weeks later we received the devastating diagnosis. Brien immediately had to assume the roll of her full time caregiver and try and work from home. Our office purchase was set to close at the end of September and then during October we had set for construction to start at the office to build out some rooms. We had no idea how we were going to care for Grace during this time as Brien was going to have to visit the office frequently to supervise the construction project, making sure things were on track, on time, and generally going smoothly. We were thankful to have the support of many friends and family offering to help in her care, however given the complexities of her medical fragility, this would have been a more difficult thing to accomplish now.

Well, we ended up not having to worry about Grace's care because we didn't end up closing the deal in September....or October....during this time, many red-tape issues came up with the purchase, too many boring things to describe here having to do with legislation, small business loans, and many boring blah blah government agencies. During these past couple of weeks, Brien and I had grown very frustrated over the whole thing and were starting to think maybe it just wasn't meant to work out at all. Then, last week, when we had just about reached our frustration limits, we ended up finally closing the deal.

Today, here I sit in her room, reflecting over all of the past month's activities. I realize that patience truly is virtuous. Because the whole deal took so much longer than expected, I believe it was much easier for us to truly focus on Grace, not only on taking the best care of her, but also being able to treasure every moment we had with her and making each day special. We even had plans to set her up in a playpen at the new office so that we wouldn't have to be away from her for a second. Although we are very saddened that the playpen plan never happened, we do take great comfort in knowing that Grace knew best, she had a plan for us that we may not have necessarily saw then, but now we can see it just a little more clear. This week, Grace asks you to remember the power of patience. She knows that good things come to those who wait.