Learning Patience Through Suffering

March 27th was my last blog post until today. I have been on hiatus mainly because my right hand was in a cast and eliminated temporarily my ability to type. The cast came off two weeks ago, 12 weeks after a freak accident at the gym broke a small, slow healing bone in my wrist.

During this same period, I was addressing some heart issues that had been plaguing me since last September. Two trips to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN seem to have put me on the road back to some normalcy.

This past ten months has been one of the most frustrating periods of my life. I am a go-getter and typically want to push to my limits much of the time. I like to exercise, work outside, do home projects, and write. I have not been the most patient person when I can’t do what I want (or feel I need) to do. But that was my journey during this past fall, winter, and spring. I wasn’t able to do much, nor did I often feel like it. When your heart is not working efficiently, then it is challenging to find the energy to do things. And with the onset of my wrist injury, I couldn’t do a lot even if I felt up to it, which I often did.

So I had to learn patience. I had to accept my weakness of body and learn contentment for what I could do. In addition to doing my YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/@ViewsfromDownstream), I decided to do a lot of reading. Besides the Scriptures, I re-read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia and his Space Trilogy. I got a library card and checked out some Jannette Oake books, none of which I had read. I’m now on my second biography and have another fiction book in waiting. I took very leisurely walks with my wife, had visits with friends, and basically, after months of battling, surrendered my need to always be active physically.

It's been a valuable lesson. To make a play on Jesus’ words, man cannot live on activity alone. Like so many men, I have longed gained validation through what I do. The past ten months has been full of temptations to embrace the idea that I had lost my value and purpose. I fell so many times to those temptations early on. I was easily angered out of frustration with my circumstances. But I am gratified to say that I became more content with them as time went along.

We never know what life will bring to us. Regardless, our value is much greater than what we experience in this life. It’s fallenness often brings heartache and weakens us. In those times it is helpful to remember the words of the Lord to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (II Corinthians 12:9). Indeed it has been for me.

© Jim Musser 2025 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.