Waiting Room

The times spent in waiting rooms of Dr.’s offices are always awkward. The most common, of course, is the doctor's office. You're surrounded by moms with children, elderly folks who smell and aren't aware of it, and teenagers that are either very tan or very very pale. The small children hit a toy over and over again on the little plastic table, making your groggy head feel worse. The smell of the babies' diaper whimpering next to you joins the wafting from the elderly gentlemen across from you. The muted strumming of the acoustic guitar and the wailing trumpet that sometimes makes it through the cacophony of non-muted coughs and clearing of mucous from the respiratory system. The nurses in their bright, multi-colored scrubs with cartoons dancing on them provide a kaleidoscope effect to your numbed senses. You sign several forms with a pen that runs out of ink randomly throughout your insurance information, which makes you hope that someone else gets charged the deductible. You can't remember if you put on deodorant, or maybe that’s just the teenager next to you.
Waiting rooms are never for good reasons. You don’t go there when you took a vacation day, or when you want to enjoy the sunshine or want to relax. Only problems (yours or someone else’s) send you to waiting rooms. Sometimes trivial but chronic symptoms, sometimes much larger issues.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in the waiting room in my life. Nothing around me seems to uplift me or encourage me, everything drags me down and depresses me. It’s grimy, unsettling, uncomfortable, and I feel gross.
Rick Warren, in a devotional, says of his time spent in a waiting room, “you just need to stop and trust God. He’s never late or in a hurry, because His timing is perfect.”
That phrase struck me right where I sat in my waiting room of life. It didn’t give me some euphoric feeling that everything will be sunshine and daisies, but it reminded me that on the other side of that waiting room door, the Maker of the Universe sits, loving me, asking me to lean on Him, and mercifully encouraging me to realize that His timing is perfect.