For my 15th birthday, I got a Bible. I have it in front of me now. Underneath the message “To dearest Christina, with much love from Mummy and Daddy” there is a red sticker saying JESUS. Next to it, in rather childish handwriting, I’ve written: “died for ME!!” On the inside jacket there are more stickers: “He was born to die”, “Have a happy new life with Jesus” and, with letters turned into hearts and smiley faces, “GOD LOVES YOU”. Underneath the stickers, I’ve written out a quote from the book of Romans. “If we hope for what we do not see,” it says, “we wait for it with patience.”
My parents would have been surprised to see me talking about patience. Their view of the sulky teenager who spent hours hogging the bathroom was that she was more keen on her family’s patience than on developing any of her own.
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