Patience—the ability to put our desires on hold for a time—is a precious and rare virtue.

Patience is the capacity to endure delay, trouble, opposition, or suffering without becoming angry, frustrated, or anxious.

It is the ability to do God’s will and accept His timing. When you are patient, you hold up under pressure and are able to face adversity calmly and hopefully. Forget not to be patient with yourself. God wants to help us to eventually turn all our weaknesses into strengths.

It's okay that you're not quite there yet.

Keep working on it, but stop punishing yourself.

A 14-year-old boy recently said to me a little hesitantly, “Brother Holland,

I can’t say yet

that I know the Church is true, but I believe it is.”

I told this boy that belief was always the first step toward conviction, and that the definitive articles of our collective faith each begin with the phrase “We believe.”

Patience means to abide in faith, knowing that sometimes it is in the waiting rather than in the receiving that we grow the most. Except in the case of His Only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. So be kind regarding human frailty—your own,

as well as those who serve with you in a church led by volunteer mortal men and women. Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily.

It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. Let us be patient with those we serve. Understand that they, like us, are imperfect. They like us, make mistakes.

They like us, want others to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Never give up on anyone. And that includes not giving up on yourself.