Waiting Rooms
May 25, 2024
“We will be right with you”
Okay, waiting. Right with me, right, okay. Waiting. How long? Right with me, okay. Hmm wonder what they are doing in there, taking so much longer than I would like. Come on, I’m just one person, waiting to see if I am sick. You look at a test, see it as positive or negative, then go from there, give me antibiotics, maybe? Come on, it should only take a few minutes, 30 max if you account for the waiting of test results.
But, there’s a system.
Me causing a scene, asking when, how much longer, please now? isn’t speeding up the process. The doctors are doing what they can. And I am here, called to wait, they will be right with me.
I am in a room. Others are waiting also, for different reasons I assume, but waiting, nonetheless. Waiting together.
We see the room. We see the waiting. The agonizing waiting process.
What we don’t see is what is happening behind those doors. Behind the doors that open every few minutes with a doctor announcing the name of who’s next. The work of the doctors, taking vitals, pacing from the patients to the lab room to the patient rooms to, wherever else they need to in order to get the job done.
We see the waiting, not the work.
“Last name Easton… Isabella”
Phew!! My patience has been rewarded, the waiting can be stopped!
Okay, a doctor will be there with medicine and boom, I’ll be out of here, a mere 3 hours later, just a little more than I’d like.
No, no, waiting once more, just in another room. My mindless scrolling has stopped as I begin to hear the Lord’s voice. “This is what I mean, you distract yourself in the waiting. I am calling you to appreciate the waiting. Admire the process. And while you wait on one thing, you can act on another” Clock ticking, my thoughts unraveling this piece of insight that I feel is a bit ambiguous. I ponder…
We are called to wait. Sometimes for longer than we’d like, although, does anyone really like to wait at all? It’s not in our nature, to wait. We’re all called to pursue! Go, with passion, to get things done! To do! God has a different lens. He gives us the gift of action, but also the gift of waiting. When we wait, he works. When we work, he works. He is always working, he is constant. We are called to trust in that, no matter if we are feeling more like we are in the action or in the waiting.
Psalm 20 something - “Wait passionately”
Am I supposed to wait passionately for the Lord? What does that even look like?
There’s beauty in the waiting room. We’re not supposed to see the behind-the-door scene. With our expertise? With our knowledge? We would be in the way of the ones who can really do something.
When we insert ourselves in the waiting, we are prolonging the work that is being done.
When we ask, why? When? How much longer? What are you doing?
We are called to wait. To passionately wait. To wait and appreciate the worker.
Doctor here.
Work is done.
We may find ourselves moving from one waiting room to another, one season of waiting to another. We must trust that the waiting will come to an end, in one way or another. And in the meantime, we may be called to pursue one aspect of life while we are waiting in another. Maybe we are called to simply wait, to be patient. Maybe the rejection is redirection. Maybe it looks completely different than what we thought it would, and we are called to take it and learn.
Jan 1, 2025
Updated thought: As I am reading this, it is a bit scrambled, and I want to add another perspective that I sort of mentioned throughout this metaphorical story (well, written from a true story while I was in a waiting room but turned into metaphor haha). I wanted to touch on the concept of ‘waiting seasons’. I saw a video a while ago where the perspective was that we are never in “waiting seasons“, or, I think what they were saying, was that we should be thinking more about what the Lord is having us do in the present moment rather than what we should be waiting for in the next. I think they mentioned taking ‘waiting season‘ out of their vocabulary as well, and since that video I have too, so reading this excerpt back I wanted to delete and switch around the concept, but that would mean changing the perspective of where I was in that moment. So, more thoughts on this, but for now I’d like to touch on it as I thought it was interesting.
