True Love is Patient

1 Corinthians 13

Our culture is saturated with a cheap imitation of love and we (even Christians) have forgotten what the real deal looks like. It becomes quite challenging in a world convinced that "it takes a village to raise a child" to raise our children differently while the "village" around us pulls them in another direction, yet my husband and I really want them to experience true love (God's love) and not be deceived by the cheap imitation. This won't be possible unless we ourselves know what true love looks like and give that love to the best of our ability to our children and demonstrate it toward each other.
1 Cor 13:4: love is patient/patience/long suffering/suffereth long/always patient
This is one aspect of love that I'm particularly weak in right now. God is so patient with me, in forgiving my sins repeated daily, in allowing me time to work through my weaknesses (despite His help I often need weeks or years to improve upon them), in providing solutions for problems I caused myself. I need to communicate that same patience toward my family. I am praying for greater patience, but I am also working toward it by choosing to bite my tongue and give myself time-outs and asking for forgiveness when I've lost my temper. As I face various personal struggles I am also choosing to accept the suffering, ask the Lord for patience and grace to endure the suffering as long as He sees fit, looking for the lessons He wants to teach me through the suffering, choosing to trust Him even when I don't see the reason for the suffering, and purposefully identifying and thanking the Lord for the many blessings I am receiving from Him daily besides (and because of) the struggles of the suffering.