I recently joined a brand new bible study group for men at my church, and the second week’s topic inspired this week’s question. I won’t go into the subject matter in detail in this post, but it’s about learning patience. One of the discussion questions asks the reader to consider how successfully he’d be able to remain patient in a given set of scenarios.

Here is the list, which you’ll use to answer this week’s question:

1. Getting trapped behind a slow driver on the interstate.
2. Waiting in a long line at the bank.
3. Waiting at a store behind another customer who needs a price check.
4. Waiting for your best friend to show up at the surprise party you are throwing for him/her.
5. Building (or purchasing) a home.
6. Waiting for a promised raise or promotion at work.
7. Waiting for test results from a doctor.
8. Waiting for the arrival of a new baby in the family.
9. Teaching a teenager how to drive a car.
10. Waiting for a much-anticipated love interest to call for a second date.

Those are the ten situations that you have to work with.  But before the question, I ask for one more moment of your patience to recognize last week’s sole player.  (Are there no other Hitchcock fans in the blogosphere?!?)

• First to play last week: Scarlett of Scarlett’s Society of Quirky. Congratulations!

(According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here is this week’s “Sunday Seven” question. Either answer in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your blog in which you answer the questions. A general link to your blog cannot count. Enjoy!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Name the seven scenarios listed in which you’d have the most difficult time maintaining your patience.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.

MY ANSWERS:
1. Waiting for test results from a doctor. — No, really. Major hypochondriac here. If there’s even the POSSIBILITY that something’s wrong, I will drive myself crazy until the doctor tells me it’s nothing.
2. Waiting in line at a store behind another customer who needs a price check. — Especially if it’s because there’s no barcode on the item they’re trying to buy. I mean, come on: check for a barcode BEFORE you get to the cashier because you KNOW it will hold up everyone if what you’re buying doesn’t have one!
3. Waiting in a long line at the bank. — If I go to the bank, and I try to avoid it when possible, it’s during my lunch hour, so I’m already dealing with a limited amount of time to start with.
4. Waiting for a much-anticipated love interest to call for a second date. — Okay, not much experience in this department: I generally don’t get calls about the first date. Still, if it’s someone who is important to me and I’m waiting to hear from them, it’s tough to stay focused on things until I do.
5. Getting trapped behind a slow driver on the interstate. — This would have ranked higher, but it’s the interstate, so I can always pass them. But there’s this street I drive down every day on my way to work with a line of medical office buildings, and every day I get behind people who insist on driving 15 miles an hour looking for their doctor’s office. The anger I feel is precisely why I do NOT drive around with one of those little Christian fish symbols on the back of my car. And it goes back to me being a hypochondriac: if I knew I had to go somewhere for a test, I’d go the night before, trace the route, know for CERTAIN I knew where the office was in advance so I wouldn’t be late. (As if that might somehow motivate the technicians to get me the results sooner!)
6. Waiting for a promised raise or promotion at work. — Only because I’m impatient about getting debts paid down. More money is more money.
7. Waiting for your best friend to show up at a surprise party you’re throwing for him/her. — Although now that I’ve included this one, my closest friends will probably keep me waiting intentionally if they ever get wind of me throwing them a party…just to toy with me.