A gap in the deck

I have a funny reminder now of my sin, every day: a gap in our deck.

Anyone who meets me for about 10 minutes could probably tell you that I'm not patient. It comes out in my marriage, at work, with the dog, planning for our future -- pretty much everywhere. I just don't like being slow. I'm a perfectionist, but I'm also a get-it-checked-off-the-checklist-ist, and sometimes (OK, a lot), that part wins out.

When we were building the deck, Ryan and I were screwing in the last four or five boards. I was tired, ready to be done, to enjoy the fruit of our labor. We put a warped board down, and Ryan wanted to take the time to get it pushed up against the other board correctly. I didn't -- I just wanted to knock the screws in. So I whined, said surely it wouldn't be that bad, and just pretty much kept working.

To this day, I hate that gap. My perfectionism has now won out, and my impatience stares me in the face whenever I look at that gap. Luckily, I think it's hilarious (and so does Ryan), but it's there nonetheless. It reminded me of a sermon from September, after which I wrote:

"'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.' The fruit (singular) of the Spirit is (singular)...nine things. Wait a minute. We expect, 'But the fruits of the Spirit are...' Here's how Darrin explained it -- fruit grows symmetrically. If we are not growing in ALL of those things, we are living in our personality, not in the Spirit. There is only one fruit of the Spirit, and it encompasses all those things that we identify individually."

Patience is my shriveled little fruit next to the rest, and I'm working on that one. And the gap in our deck is there to remind me.