Presents Pending

One of the items on my wish list this year was a book that's not coming out out until early January. Two people ordered this book for me and didn't learn of the coincidence until Christmas, at which point, one of those gift-givers cancelled their order and ordered something else for me instead (possibly multiple somethings, if I heard her correctly). I was also given some money for a CTR ring that I'll get when I figure out my ring size and pick out a style a like. Because of these events, I know that I have a fair handful of gifts pending, and that has had a few interesting effects on my emotions.

First, I'm excited. I know a few of the gifts I'm getting, and I'm super-excited to get them. There is also a gift or two I have pending that I don't know exactly what it is/they are, and the suspense I feel about those gifts is similar to that which I would feel about any wrapped gift, except that I don't have an actual physical box to guess by, which heightens the mystery. It's like looking forward to Christmas all over again, but since I don't know exactly when the packages will arrive, I'm not sure when my next mini-Christmas will be. One or more package(s) could arrive any day now, for all I know, but at least one of the packages I'm getting I know won't come until early- or mid-January, and it's exciting to not know not only what I'm getting, but also when I'm getting it.

On the other hand, it's hard to be patient. With regular Christmas gifts, you open them on Christmas and get them instantly. Some gifts may take some time after Christmas to set them up or something, but generally, you get your gifts at Christmas and get to enjoy having them right away. This situation of knowing that I have gifts coming, but not knowing when I'll get them, is testing my patience, and the fact that my patience feels like it's being tested makes me think that I don't have enough of it. I should be able to live contently without those gifts for a few days/weeks, don't you think? After all, I had been had been perfectly satisfied before learning that I was going to get those things. Why should I feel anxious to receive those gifts, now that I know that I eventually will? It's good that I feel excited, and in a sense, I'm glad that I didn't get all my gifts right away, because the delay extends my anticipation. Yet, I also feel more impatient than I'm comfortable with feeling. I didn't think I was an impatient person, but the feelings I have about waiting for the rest of my Christmas presents makes me feel like I have room to improve.

This once again makes the delay a positive thing, and for that reason, I hope it lasts. I don't feel very patient, and a part of me doesn't feel like trying to be patient, but not having those Christmas presents right now gives me an opportunity to practice being patient. This experience is testing my patience, giving me a chance to exercise and increase it, which is something that, until recently, I didn't know I needed.

By getting me gifts that I can't possess and enjoy right away, those gift-givers got me more than just the pending presents than I'm excited and eager to get. They also gave me an opportunity to practice a Christlike attribute and thus become more like Jesus Christ. They gave me an experience in delayed gratification and a parallel experience to receiving promised blessings (plus a nice analogy and something interesting to blog about).

We all have gifts from our Heavenly Father pending their arrival or our arrival to them. There are gifts that He has promised us that we cannot receive until we are worthy or until the time is right. There are great blessings awaiting us, but we must be patient until we receive them. In some cases, whether we receive those gifts at all depends on whether we can wait for them patiently. In other cases, patience merely increases our happiness and contentment while we wait. God's not going to give us any blessings early, no matter how badly we want Him to, so we might as well learn to live without them for as long as we have to and learn to be satisfied in the knowledge that we will eventually get them, when the time is right. Similarly, my patience, or lack thereof, won't make my packages arrive any sooner or later than they will, but it will affect how content I am with waiting for them to come. I hope that I can learn to be more patient as I anxiously anticipate the arrival of my remaining presents, and I hope that we can all learn to be patient as we wait for our pending gifts.