“Patience is not the ability to wait, but how you act while you’re waiting.”

Patience. The very word can cause us to roll our eyes. That's because when we think of patience, we think of waiting. And we don't like to wait. But it seems as though we're always waiting for something. Waiting for a certain thing to happen, for one thing to begin, and another to end. Waiting for more time or more money. Waiting for our marriage to get better, or for our spouse to change. Waiting for the kids to grow up. Waiting for our prayers to be answered. Waiting can be painful and difficult—especially when it comes to our need for change in marriage. But God says that waiting is good. That's because it produces patience in us. The apostle Paul tells us that patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit—in other words, patience is a byproduct of God's work within us. He describes it as "longsuffering" (Galatians 5:22, NKJV), a word that, according to Webster's dictionary, means "long and patient enduring of injury, trouble, or provocation.