Patience.

Since we last spoke of time, its only appropriate that we now speak of patience. Patience is not on her of strengths. Its not even close to making the list.

Waiting. "Who has time to wait?," she thinks. What is she missing while she's waiting?

Patience/waiting...plays a rather large role in her life. Especially in her relationship. 

About a year ago, about a year ago almost exactly, she linked herself to a boy, a boy from a very small town. And this boy has become quite an important person in her life. First only described as a friend, this boy quickly became more than that to her. 

They met in the woods of lower Alabama in the middle of a hot, hot Summer. He introduced himself to her with his name followed by a cheesy line that she will always remember. They spent that summer living in those Alabama woods, camping, helping, serving, growing, sweating, learning about life, each other, their friends, and themselves.

Following this experience and the end of Summer, a whole new level of friendship developed; one of hours and hours of conversation, weekend trips to and fro, respect, understanding and - - strictly friendship.

Let's rewind to the part where I left out the fact that this boy lives roughly 250 miles away from our girl.

These little weekend trips he was making to see her were no small feat. And our girl, what did she think of this? Well, she seemed to pay no attention to the notion that a boy usually doesn't just drive 8 hours in a weekend to hang out with his friends, nor does he spend hours on the phone with his friends every night of the week. So... after six months of friendship, she finally realizes that she's been missing out on a whole different level of friendship with this small town boy.

One cold night in December, as the snow fell onto the window of the truck in which they sat, in those same Alabama woods that brought them together six months earlier, she finally gathered the nerve to tell this boy that she had given up on fighting the feelings that were so prevalent in her heart, feelings that she had been fighting for months while he waited patiently... and that was all it took.

And so it was. The beginning of our girl and her boy.

Their entire relationship is sustained by patience. Yes, even by the tiny shred that she holds on to. They go weeks without seeing each other. Their days are tied together by every form of communicative technology possible. (Even though a relationship hinged on hand written letters sounds much more romantic, in this day in time, technology equals sanity - especially in a long distance relationship.)

So patience plays an active role in the girl and boy's relationship. They are constantly counting down the weeks, days or hours until they can see each other. This type of patience in particular is quite difficult. When love is involved, it seems that even minutes can be painful when spent waiting to be reunited with the one your heart longs for.

Our girl feels so lucky to have her boy. He helps teach her patience daily, among other values. He is the laid-back to her uptight, he is the calm to her frustration, he is the steady moving to her fast pace, he is the breath she sometimes forgets to take. She belives he has been brought into her life for a purpose. And even if that purpose is nothing other than to teach her about patience, she will hold on to it as long as she can because he is different. His heart cares about her. She knows it.

So here she sits. Waiting (ironically) for patience to wash over her as she waits for the day when they can be together... without the 250 miles.

Time.

Time is a funny thing. Once it has passed, it reveals things you never saw coming. The passage of time reveals the inner workings of the plot of your life that you never could have imagined for yourself.

This small town southern girl, she believes in time. (Lord knows she plans out her time like she's the one in charge of it.) Nevertheless, she believes in it. She calculates it and spreads it out. She bundles it up and gives it out when needed. She is also very selfish with it at times. She understands the value of it; like it is a gift to be given out sparingly. Time is a very real factor in her life. He will appear many times throughout her fairytale. Sometimes as the Fairy Godmother. Sometimes as the Wicked Witch.

Just like everyone else, she knows that time cannot go on forever. Her fear is that time will run out before she has experienced all of the places in her dreams. Daily tasks and everyday living sometimes take precedence over those dreams - not by her choice, however. That's just the way life is.

If she had it her way, these tasks would not trump her idealistic plans, but enhance them. They could work together, hold hands and weave their way along the open roads of this life - smiling and laughing, reminiscing about the good times they've had and all of the journeys that lie ahead. But life is not this fair. Its as if life knows time is precious, but has us book him up anyway with things that aren't important yet remian necessary to survival.

Life is tricky like that.

Do you ever think about time? How it sneaks along, sometimes crawling past us at the speed of a snail and at others, flying by so fast it leaves heads spinning.

Time is one thing that our girl can't grasp fully. While she does cherish it and believe its passage has purpose, she gets wrapped up in it. Thinking of how it slips through her fingers, focusing too much on what it holds for her in the future. Sometimes, she's afraid she's missed the present because she's been looking toward the future - contemplating her relationship with time.

She wonders why she can't simply enjoy time as it comes. Is she the only one who chases after him?

Once upon a time.

Just as every good fairytale begins (or should), so shall this one. Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there was a small town, southern girl who dreamed of seeing the world. She dreamt of exotic places that would reach inside of her and pull out her highest potential, culturally enriched foods that would thrill her taste buds like never before, and of course, as all small town girls do, she dreamt of her prince charming, her knight in shining armor, her one true love.

She thought daily of each of these dreams. Will they ever become a reality? Or will she live the rest of her life hoping and praying that she will "someday" reach these idealistic places that she's built up so in her mind? See, the one problem with someday is that someday will never exist. Someday is a cop-out for those who never actually plan on reaching whatever goal it is that they've set for themselves, she feels. It is a vague word with no purpose behind it. Instead of someday, she prefers to use "one day." One day has more meaning behind it in her mind. One day, meaning, there will a point in time that she will go out and catch these dreams.. or perhaps, they will even catch her.

Our girl is quite idealistic. She almost always hopes for the best; she believes in things and the potential of things.. and people for that matter. On occasion, she has been known to believe in these things, and people, a little too much. She builds up these ideas in her head that don't always come to fruition. She does her best, but others don't often do theirs. Not that she is perfect. By NO means is she perfect, but sometimes it seems she tries very hard to be. But here lately, she has given up on trying to be someone else's idea of perfect. She has grown. She has grown up. She has grown into someone she is quite proud of...now if she only knew what to do next.

You see, a problem with small town southern girls is that they often get comfortable. Comfortable with their life, their friends, their family, their expectations. And to our small town southern girl, comfortable is not always the way to go.

You see, she has planned many things in her life: comfortable things, idealistic things. Such as a comfortable school. A comfortable goal for her time at her comfortable school. A comfortable career. A comfortable (dream) husband...so on and so forth. And if nothing else, from all of this planning she has learned God has other plans. Every time our girl believes she's got something figured out, something that sounds perfect in her plan, that figured out turns into a lot of : a.) re-figuring. b.) submission. or c.) tears. (Usually tears accompany each of the options. Yes, even the tears option is accompanied by more tears.) There is one trend that seems to follow each of these, um, disruptions to the plan: that trend being that it works out for the best. How? Who knows? But she believes it may have something to do with the passage of time.