The Trouble with Patience

This past week I had a good lesson in patience. I get a lot of chances at this lesson because I’m short on it. I have been both gifted and cursed to see a clear path to fixing a problem or an injustice and I think the rest of the world should just get on it and move along. I’ve prayed about the defective side of this gift, talked about it, pondered and fretted about my lack of patience for years.

I sought scripture. “A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.” Prov 19:11. Wisdom is a quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. So does a man (or woman) need those qualities first to give him patience? That quote doesn’t help me. “The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.” Ecclesiastes 7:8

Now this is something I can sink my teeth into. First, it makes sense. Let’s look at the characteristics of pride: a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc. That’s me. Lock, stock and barrel!

Okay where is this self debasing heading?

Let’s go back to November 21, 2007 to the beginning of my matter—the night I found out my email address that is linked to my blog and my website, and my puffed up sense of importance on the internet, was hijacked.

So, I get a call from a friend at 11:00 PM. Late night calls are never a good sign. She said her daughter and she both received emails from me asking for money, indicating I was in Africa ministering to AID victims.

I assured her it wasn’t me, then went to my computer and typed in my Gmail password. I must have typed it wrong. So I tried it again, nope, and again. Access denied. I tried to get Google to send my “new” password by emailing it to my secondary address. A hacker changed all my secret questions and my secondary email address and was emailing everyone I knew asking for cash.

I wish I could say that, being a good Christian, I calmly decided to take care of the problem, but instead I went into full-state boogie panic. Did I mention this was the night before Thanksgiving—a long four day weekend, and no doubt a longer one for the spectacular employee benefits at Google.

My nerves then exploded when I learned the hacker had also secured my other two emails, which because I linked them to Gmail is simple to access if one’s into my account. I immediately regained control of these emails, thank you Yahoo and Cox.net, but I was soon to learn that Google doesn't have an immediate solution to hacked accounts, and doesn’t offer customers support beyond “forms” that you fill out and click to send—and these are difficult to find once you’re in their maze of help pages. To boot they want to know information that you can’t possibly remember—such as what day did you activate your account and what’s your activation code. Huh? Still, I thought my problem would be solved by the morning and the evil hacker would be stopped short and I’d have access to my account. Silly me.

Charged with: “God is in control,” told I my husband (in a calm voice) that “there was nothing I could do about the situation,” and I would just have to wait for Google to take care of the problem. Eventually they’d send me an email to regain my account. I knew when I said it that I didn’t mean a word of it and I could already feel my anger and sense of injustice percolating in my heart, and my plan was to start ranting and raving all over the internet on any board USA that had like complaints about Google. So, I did that, but didn’t feel any better. One poster over at Google Help Forums got so annoyed with me that he claimed Google would not help people with bad attitudes. Me? Why, I don’t have a bad attitude, I just expect Google to jump when I say how high! It’s ME after all! ME who could fix this problem if you’d just let me explain how to lock down accounts once you’re notified of a breach. ME who should have access right now, not tomorrow, of her account, even though (and this should not matter, I ranted), that I only write to my brother and he’s got my other email address, ME who has three hits a month on her blog and a half a dozen on her humdrum website. ME! ME! ME!

After five days and no resolution my shoulders were sagging.

"What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What prospects, that I should be patient? Job 6:11 NIV

By now, I was certain that Google was going to ban me, and sure enough, on day 6 my account was deleted. When I saw that my website was shut down with an ominous statement that it was “…disabled for violations of our Program Policies.” I went ballistic. ME? I’m a Christian! I don’t violate program policies!

Pride. Full blown.

There was no real reason for the panic or drama, other than I was certain this hacker now knew where I lived, where my children lived, where my cats lived, where my entire extended family lived, and could easily take over my identity as I had been busy doing genealogy for weeks and emailing (and not deleting) pictures and documents relevant to my life and family. Then, to add to worries, I thought he might kidnap me and want a ransom. Everyone I talked to assured me I was in no immediate danger, that these hackers just want money, and besides, we’d tracked him to Thailand through an IP address and it wasn’t likely he was coming to Mission Viejo, California anytime soon.

I took an ugly turn about day 7. I became fixated with “how” the hacker got my password. Forget, okay, that it was my mother’s maiden name and I post genealogy, okay…let’s move on, because by now I was convinced he was outside my house with a laptop zoning in on my wireless router!

I spent hours upon hours trying to find out how Google accounts were hacked. I read hacker boards, I typed into Google: “How do you hack into a Google account?” I combed through thousands of websites for answers, for someway to take back what I thought to be mine. I was obsessed.

“A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.” Proverbs 14:29 NIV

I was starting to look like a fool, even to myself. It was just wanting my way and wanting it now, railing against a multibillion dollar corporation. I wasn’t “letting my light so shine before men that they may see my good works and glorify my Father which is in heaven,” Matt 5:16. Heck no, I was posting anonymously lest someone call me a Christian hypocrite!

I wasn’t trusting God would resolve my Google problem. I wasn’t sure God liked the Internet and hearkened it to the Tower of Babel. For 9 days I had no peace and a bad attitude, as I was certain Google had my name on their “do not resuscitate list,” and then, out of the blue on day 9 the Google email arrived. My account was restored, they were sorry for the inconvenience. Hurmph! I logged on, certain all was lost, but I was wrong. Not a missing letter, not a missing picture, not a missing comma from website or blog. All was well.

So, I sat down and ate some humble pie.

I’d completely lost focus on all my “prior” projects, and everything had been set aside so I could pound on Google’s iron doors. Though my account was restored, I began a series of rebellions against Google—I was packing up and leaving town. “I’d show them!” So I spent two days, a total of about 16 hours trying to learn a new Blog program. It’s running but difficult for me to manage compared to Google’s slick, “click and go” Blogger. Then I went back to my old POP email account, which I didn’t have a copy of and had to download and configure. Next the tedious importing of addresses and spending another three hours notifying my contacts that I was now back at my old address—an email program I never particularly liked since it can only be accessed at home.

Next, I spent an entire day revamping my old website, which meant finding it on a backup drive, relearning basic HTML and hunting for elements to bring it back to life, all of which had to be uploaded on to a server, which meant I needed an FTP program. That project took another hour to install and configure. I don’t have website software so I used Word and, well, it looks like it.

And finally, I ran around the Internet changing my passwords to encrypted gobbly-gook so no one could figure them out—including me, which means I’m having to hunt and peck through a series of passwords in a book that’s dog-eared and scratched and scribbled on every page and a painful and redundant hassle every time I want to log into any of the sites I’m registered.

After all the time wasted to get even with Google, after all my brain cells were fried, my husband mentioned kind of off handedly, “You asked God to restore your Google account, and he did, so why are you now leaving Google? You got what you prayed for.”

Patience.
Patience.
Patience.

Nope. Pride reared its nasty head, and I sneered, “I just couldn’t keep everything in one location if it’s not secure.” He shook his head in agreement, then said, “Well, look at it this way, you didn’t lose money or any content, so why not just create a better password and move forward?”

I went into a justice rant. Oh, I heard the whinnying. It was terrible.

Huge exhalation here…so, I failed patience, again. Though I was reading God’s word during the entire quagmire, I wasn’t following his divine instruction. “Trust in the Lord with all thy heart; and lean not unto thy own understanding." Proverbs 3:5, 6 There’s no way I can, or ever will, understand how Google operates, and I need to get real that God does care about every aspect of my life including my Google account.

And then my husband said, “Remember what you used to tell me, the devil is in the details.” Oh, yea, I did say that! And then it hit me. I’d tied myself up with the details of self-righteousness and pride while trying to fix what I felt was wrong, not letting God do things his way, and let down my guard. The devil slipped right on in distracting me from my writing and various other concerns that are far more important than what I was doing. And that’s how it happens. God tells us to “put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Eph 6:11.

I can’t think of a better example than what happened last week. I’d not put on the armor thinking that it was reserved for the “big stuff in life.” But the devil works in the details—the little stuff! I lost sight of everything over nothing.

Sometimes I think I’ll never change, but that’s just what Satan wants, he wants us to beat ourselves up when we fail miserably. He wants us to think the Christian life is too hard. He wants us to give up when we backslide. Back to the mind of God: “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you; I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.” Isa 46.4

I’m back to Google. They may take their sweet time to secure their end users, but at the moment for this impatient soul, it’s the best bet going on the internet.