👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Hey guys. Welcome back to the PSALMS to God podcast. Once again I have my friend Derrell here, and we're talking about patience. So this is the second part of the last episode. If you have not already listen to the first episode on patience, you will definitely want to check it out. I try not to do 2 part episodes where you actually need to listen to them in a certain order, but this time I think it's best if you listen to the first episode first and this one second, because there is some continuance of conversation and we probably will be referencing things from the previous episode since it was actually one conversation. But without further ado this is the rest of Darrell and I’s conversation about patience and what we've experienced concerning patience in life.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: So Derrell, let's continue our conversation on patience. Looking back, how do you feel about those injuries?

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Like just that fast... Like I said, the second I tore my knee, I thought I was done. I thought that was it. And I was like “Man, I spent my money. I invested all this time. I spent all this time away from my friends and family.” And to be chasing this one thing, and it’s possibly over. ‘Cause I thought I had torn my ACL, MCL, PCL.[1] Come to find out a meniscus is actually a very commonly torn ligament. It’s something runners tear all the time. Sometimes they can be back 2 weeks, 6 weeks. ‘Cause I had to have the surgery, my whole recovery period was 6 months, but I was up on my feet and walking after 2 weeks of surgery—from surgery. Actually I was walking a week after surgery. In 2 weeks they cleared me to go back to the gym and start working out again. Light stuff, but I could start working out again.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: It's better than nothing.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: So, when I say like patience is something that taught me. I had to have patience. But patience isn’t just about... Because some people think I need to be patient about—patient in traffic you know? Like sometimes there’s gonna be traffic, you have to have patience. Because one thing people say, “I really got to get to such and such.” Well, what if this traffic is keeping you from getting into a collision up the road? How often do people think about that? Or how about when you leave the house but you say, “Aw man, I left my bag at the house. Now I have to turn around.” Well, take the time. Be patient. Go back and get it, because what if the reason why you left that, and you had to go back was a drunk driver was going to be caught speeding through a red light you were going to be at and that could’ve hit you? You know. So, when you think about things like that, like sometimes patience is for the virtue, and sometimes people want the now, now, now. When you gotta let things—just take your time.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: My dream didn’t just come out of nowhere. I actually thought about it. I sat down. I looked at my finances. I looked at how am I going to get to and from. It took me working from job to job to get to a job that will allow me where I can work from 6-2 and then have the rest of the afternoon off to go wrestle. A lot of jobs don’t allow people to work from 6 to 2pm—6am to 2pm—

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: You right![2]

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: My sister tells me all the time that’s really unheard of. But I have a great job, that's flexible, that allows me to do what I need to do for wrestling. So in the grand scheme of things, all the pieces fell into place at the right time. At God’s timing—He has perfect timing.—

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yes! God is great at that.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: 😂Yeah, like that whole saying of “I’m not going to be there when you want me, but I’ll be there right on time.” And when I tell you, every place along this journey of wrestling, He’s been right on time. It's been an amazing ride thus far and like my wrestling career has just taken off as far as being on TV, but I’ve just been truly amazed at how I had dreamed of being one of those guy that I saw on TV and here I am tomorrow—April 27th—I'm going to be on Ring of Honor TV.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah!

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: 😂 So it’s just, patience. I learned a lot about patience. And you learn a lot about patience in—even with wrestling. When you first start you’re low man on the totem pole[3] and you have to put in—in the business it’s called paying your dues.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah, that's true everywhere. You got to pay your dues everywhere.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: For those people who don’t understand what paying dues means, if you understand Greek life then you understand having to be humble and having to be a neophyte at some point in time, and paying your dues. So, or like if you’re on like a varsity team, like in high school. Or I don’t know, you were in the band, so I'm pretty sure freshmen had to go get the water.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah, rookie status.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Yeah, so everybody understands paying your dues. So in wrestling, paying your dues means showing up early to unload the truck, build the ring, set out chairs, do security during the show. Once the show’s over, break down everything, pack up the truck, go back to wherever the ring is stored, unload the ring, and do it all again next weekend—and have a smile on your face when you’re doing it.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Exactly.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: So, and once again, a lot of guys don't make it because they don’t have the patience to deal with that. They just want to come, throw me in the ring and I want to look great. And it’s not that simple. You have to pay your dues; that’s just a part of patience. I had a lot of patience. I did it with a smile on my face. I actually was head of security while I was paying my dues. So I don't know how I got put in that position. It was just, I didn't think the way it was being run was being run correctly, so I stepped up and when I did it there were no more issues. So I don't know if…

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Hey, that means you did something right!

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Well, you know, my pastor always says if something bothers you, then that’s your calling and you go do it.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: This is true.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: So at that time I was like, this isn’t being done right, so let me take it. But yeah, that’s my testimony on patience and where it’s gotten me thus far.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah! Thank you for sharing that. You know I struggle.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: No problem.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: I struggle with patience. One of the things I realized... So before I do each of my episodes, particularly on the Fruit of the Spirit, I look up like all the references to that Fruit of the Spirit in the Bible, and I'd like to tell y’all that I read every single one of them but that would be a bald-faced lie.

👨🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱 DERRELL+ REE: 😂

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: But, I read as many as I can. And when I looked up the stuff on patience. You know, of course a lot of the stuff that you were talking, about about how going through tribulations and having endurance is part of building character and part of how God gets us where we need to be. It also aligned our goals with His timing. But one of the ideas, crazy things that I realized is that as a looking at the Fruit of the Spirit, I felt like patience—whooo! Excuse me!—I felt like patience was the backbone. Like one of the things I've been noticing is that they’re, I don’t want to say interchangeable, but in order to have one of them you need the other. So for instance, like in order to love somebody, you have to be patient with them. But in order to be patient with them you have to love them. And so, like almost all of the Fruit of the Spirit, you can go through and see this correlation. Like in order to have joy you have to have patience; in order to have patience you kind of have to have joy, ‘cause you have to be content at the state that you're in in the moment.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And I realized that—I know at least speaking for myself, probably for other people—the reason we struggle with each of these Fruits of the Spirit, particularly probably self-control, is because we don't have patience. And when I thought about it like that you know it it made me realize how important it is for me to slow down. And you know, one of the things you mentioned about like pride. We were talking about like what you thought you wanted. I think that ties into patience, as well. Like it's our pride that keeps us from wanting to wait, ‘cause we just want it now, and it's like a selfish instinct.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And I I just thought it was interesting, because when I look at things... Like when I first started, I was making a list of things that I was good at being patient with and things I was bad at being patient with. And then I started to realize that there were still correlations between the two, and that it's really how quickly do I lose my patience. You know, you already know I am a person, I am guilty of road rage.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: 😂

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: It's sad, because it's not really about getting to the place. It's not usually like oh they're driving too slow and I want to get there, or anything like that. For me it's usually about the principle of the matter. So I almost always get road rage when I feel like somebody is in the wrong, but they're coming for me. So you have the person that cuts you off in traffic and then they honk at you, and I'm like “Why are you honking at me? You cut me off!” and then all of a sudden I'm like super angry. And you know I think when you said you know that your pastor said when you see something wrong or something bothers you, that’s you know you're calling. I feel like I just have this passion for like the principle of the thing. That's one of the like the number one things that like when I see people doing something that's clearly wrong, and then like being boastful about it, that it drives me up the wall.

👨🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱 DERRELL+REE: 😂

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And I often wonder. Like I feel like sometimes we…Like there's the lack of patience, but like you shared your whole journey for becoming a wrestler. And I feel like sometimes we just want to take the easy way out, and so we see things that bother us, and we think like “Oh I should do XYZ. This is what it would take to fix it.” And then we’re like “Oh, that's a lot! I don't know if I can do that!” And so we try to stay back. But I think that that also makes us even more impatient, if that makes any sense. ‘Cause I feel like, because we're not fulfilling the purpose that God is calling us to, there's like this wrestling inside of us that shortens our patience even more.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Right. Wow that’s awesome. That’s an interesting way to put that.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah. That's what I've been coming to the realization in the past couple of weeks.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: To me, I just think if everybody took the time to actually practice what they preach about patience, the world might be a little better. But like, this is like a big thing. So I attend a mega church, and every week when we get to the benediction, not even before we get to benediction. When Pastor gets to altar call, those who are already saved and already baptized or who just don’t want to be in church any more, get up and start leaving. 1 - because they don't want to get caught up in all the traffic. It’s a mega church and of course, once church lets out, everybody trying to get out. And so traffic gets backed up trying to get out the Church. But, however, altar call is a time in which people are making the decision on whether or not to accept Christ into their life as their Lord and Savior, or they want to be baptized, or join the church. And the thing that he says all the time is, “At one point in time, you were the person who walked up here”—

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: The —“and when you did there was somebody in your row clapping and saying “Amen,” and encouraging you to come along. So how dare you get up and leave at this... Which is probably one of the most important times of this person’s life.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah can you imagine?

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: And you’re just leaving! Huh?

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: I was going to say, can you imagine if like somebody was like “Oh I want to get baptized,” and Peter’s like “OK, come, let's go get baptized,” and Paul's like, “I got places to be,” and he just bounced?

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: 😂 Right, Paul’s said I gotta go move my camel, cause I don’t have time to be out here with y’all no more.

👨🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱 DERRELL + REE: 😂

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: So when, stuff like that, like why can't we just be patient and wait? Like we're all, we all have the same goal. We all want to leave, but It’s not like the parking lot’s not going to get empty at some point in time. So stuff like that. It’s like we put our mindset of priorities in the wrong order. Why not stay and support our brothers and sisters who are trying to make that decision within themselves. When yet they’re being distracted, ‘cause you know, you got to pick up your purse, pick up your jacket, get your Bible. If you got kids, you got to get all their stuff together. You’re making a bunch of noise trying to go one way, but you trying to listen to Pastor make his plea for your soul. 😂

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: That’s just one aspect. When you’re on your job, how many times have you seen a coworker, you know, they not acting themselves or they might be in tears. But you see them and you keep walking. I don't want to get involved. Well, what would happen if you took the time to just say, “Hey I don’t know what you’re going through, but I'm going to pray for you.” You know, and you might not want to get in their business and say “what’s wrong?” ‘Cause you could open up a whole ‘nother door. Just say I’m going to pray for you. You know, and you never know how that might change somebody's lives, but because we're all so, “I ain't got time to deal with that today.” You might have left that coworker sitting there. And then, but you don’t know what your prayer, what you just saying “I'll pray for you,” or “let's pray, so that you can get through this,” or that “God gives you the strength to get through this.” You know, you never know what that would do to somebody, or what that could do for somebody. And I just think that we're all in a rush, and we’re also focus on me, me, me, me, that sometimes God wants you to take time, be patient, and care for somebody else.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Absolutely. I've definitely been trying to strengthen my patience. One of the things I think for me... So one of the things that I think, I don't remember who told me this, but somebody once told me that when you ask God for something, sometimes you got to go through a little pain to get to it.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Oh man!

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: I know you go to the gym, so you're very aware of the saying “No pain, no gain.”

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Correct

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And so we were talking about patience and they were telling me, you know, like if you're asking God for patience, He got to give you something to give you patience. Like you don't just wake up one day and suddenly you’re patient. Like you got to go through the struggle to develop the patience. 👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Right. It’s taught. It’s not understood right away.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And you know for me, my journey through grad school was a lot like your journey to wrestling—minus the physical injuries, but I feel like I got some like mental and emotional injuries going through grad school. And you know that was like one aspect of my life where I think I really developed patience in terms of like education, learning, my career... I learned a tremendous respect for people who are homeless, people who are struggling, because of the nature of my research. But I didn't necessarily get patience with interacting with people. Being a computer scientist— Y’all, funny story! I also have an undergraduate degree in Mathematical Sciences, that I also do not use.[4]

👨🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱 DERRELL + REE: 😂 👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Sad day for Mathematical Science. But it's a great tool; it was a building block. But you know in computer science, you don’t necessarily learn or cultivate patience with people. And so one of the things that I felt called to do recently was to help with the youth at the church. People were calling for help with the youth, and I know what it means to have people of varying ages with their hands into the youth. So there's something to be said about having someone that's closer to your age that's been through what you've been through but has like a little bit of wisdom but isn't like your parents’ age, that can kind of like talk to you and do things. And so I agreed to be a mentor. How I went from being a mentor to being a teacher. I don't know how that happened, but somehow that happened.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: And you know when I first said “OK,” I was like “I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I have the patience. I don't know if I have the skill-set. Like I don't really know about this.” But the more I go into it, the more I realize lately “Oh Shiree, you got to go through it and succeed.” One, you have to succeed because these are the children. These are the youth. These are the young minds that are coming in to Christ, and if you screw this up. you done screwed up big-time. Like you can't screw up somebody else's salvation. And then I was like God is calling you to do this, so you got to learn patience. And like in order to learn it, you will have to go through it.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: So, you know, it's a thing. But it's also a blessing, because I found that, you know, just like in your story. There are valleys, but after every valley, God will give you a mountain. And you know, sometimes I'll be sitting in that class like I don't... I don't know what's going on. I don't know how to take control of this class. I don't know if I should like go zero to a hundred, or if I should go back all the way off. I don't know how to handle the situation, but then like one of the students will do something or say something or they'll take control of class, and I'm just like mystified by how things fall together and how things happen. And I'm just like “Wow. So God is here and He's handling the situation.” All I really gotta do is show up and trust Him. And that's that's the definition of patience just show up and trust God.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: Absolutely.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: 😂

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: At this point, absolutely. That’s all you have to live by. Just show up and trust God. I don’t know, you know. I’m thankful for where I am. It was a complete surprise, for me, but I know that God is working and He has a plan. So at this point, I just literally show up and trust God with all that I do.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Absolutely. So thank you so much for coming. I know your time is precious! Thank you for coming on the show and sharing all of his knowledge about wis—ah, wisdom. I was trying to say wisdom and knowledge at the same time, got all kind of tongue-tied. But yeah thank you for sharing knowledge and wisdom about patience and for sharing your testimony.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: No thank you for having me.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Of course! Before I let you go, do you have any final words to share with the listeners?

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: The thing God wants you to experience, He’'ll put you through a test to see whether you pass it. And whether you pass it or not, you will be tested with that thing time and time again. So if the thing you need to learn is patience, He might test you today, and if you pass it today OK cool. But then tomorrow, will you pass that test again? You know, that's kind of His way of like building upon your foundation, your level of patience. You now people will say “I’ve reached my highest level of patience today.” Alright, well, how can we get another level added to your patience?

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: No matter what it is—whether you’re dealing with anger, whether you’re dealing with trying to forgive people—you're going through something now, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to go through something even worse later on, but you’re going through this now. Trying to work on forgiving people because you’re going to need this foundation of forgiveness down the road. And that just applies to anything that He's trying to teach you. So if it's patience, patience isn't just going to be applied to your life right now. It's being taught to you right now, because a foundation needs to be built. That way, later on down the road, you can fall back on what you already learned to help you through that experience.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: I feel that.

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: I hope that helps.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Yeah. I love it. Thank you

👨🏽‍🦱 DERRELL: You are welcome.

👩🏾‍🦱 REE: Alright listeners, thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that will make you think about patience. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye