This entire weekend, which was supposed to be relaxing, fun, and joyous, turned into a long three days full of sleep deprivation, delayed trains, and super late nights that turned into major emotional rollercoasters. Before I boarded my train on Sunday night, I thought to myself, “If God decides to throw a curveball my way, I’ll just take it as a test of patience.” Well. Jennifer. You really got a good one this time.
I boarded my train at 9:15 pm from a small, sketchy little train station in California. My younger cousins and both parents saw me off and everything went well for a little while. I sat next to a fellow student who was heading to Flagstaff as well and I had no complaints. One hour in, mere minutes after the Barstow station, we stopped. This was odd because we were not supposed to stop for a while. After about fifteen minutes, they announce that someone had been hit by the train and it needed to be sorted out. This led to a three hour stop over a highway and some major anxiety on my part. I had to be in an exam review session the next morning at 9:00 am and I was not going to be on time. Long story short, my parents drove out from a town about 45 minutes away, picked me up at 2:45 am, and drove me five hours to my university.
Later that day, when I’m lounging around in leggings and watching a movie in my dorm, the bathroom begins flooding. Before long, I’m reduced to tears on the phone with my dad trying to figure it out while a community assistant is attempting to work everything out too. It was eventually fixed but my roommate and I are still getting everything cleaned. The sleep deprivation, long weekend with family, incident on the train, and debacle with the bathroom were so incredibly much.
On this fateful weekend, God seriously slapped me in the face. My ability to wait and have patience is mediocre. I was always told to not pray for patience because God will test it left and right. Turns out they’re right. I never prayed directly for patience but my gut feeling before boarding the train on Sunday night gave God reason enough.
Sometimes God gives us a gentle nudge in the behind to shape up and get ourselves together. However, I am an anxious person with specific routines and these interruptions really bothered. Really bothered me. Looking back on them, I know that I was being put through something that would, at the very least, teach me a lesson about patience and endurance. Instead of gently nudging me like He’s done before, He hit me hard in the back of the head with a lesson - life doesn’t go according to plan and girl, it never will.
