We have two local doctors that we go to when we need one.
One is our GP who we know quite well now and who knows our family. She doubles up as a local politician and her husband is the suburb mayor, heaven only knows how they get any kind of family life.
To see her we usually need to make an appointment a couple of weeks in advance so if we need quick treatment, we also visit the no appointment clinic with rotating overworked doctors who do crazy long hours and to whom you are just a faceless patient.
In the latter clinic, as with my hairdresser, you turn up, take a number and wait. Sometimes for hours and hours.
When you’re waiting, it can seem like an eternity. The second hand on the clock seems take a whole minute to flip over and it as if you are being tortured.
Sometimes your partner drops by or sends you a text.
Any news? How many people are in front of you now? How much longer do you think you’ll be?
Only six more people you tell them, but the last one took 45 minutes.
And then you look up and suddenly there is only one more person in front of you. Or you’re next.
I was thinking this morning that there are seasons of our lives that feel like that waiting room. Even though you know that time will eventually pass, things will eventually change, you feel like you are waiting for God to move, to respond, to speak, to say anything, anything at all.
And it can seem interminable.
In fact in a weirdly parallel way, in any one life, there are things that are moving and changing and yet inevitably there is also a list of things that we are waiting for to change.
How do we wait well? When there is uncertainty, how do we hold that uncomfortable tension and wait for the fog to clear?
When there are painful situations or grief, how do we wait without a running away or housing or distracting ourselves with sorting out another?
When we don’t know what to do or how to do what is in front of us, how do we wait well for the answers?
What happens if others come in the midst of our waiting and all is what’s happening or what we are doing there or even did we get it wrong?
I’m not asking because I have the answers, I’m asking, wondering if you do?
I realise just how bad I am at waiting, how I use all kinds of distraction techniques, how I hide from facing the uncomfortableness and do everything I can to think about something else while I wait.
And in my waiting room, sometimes I realise that I thought I was there for one purpose but it turns out God had an entirely different purpose altogether.
What do you do when God changes the game plan on you but other people still think you should be on the old plan? How do we reconcile God’s expectations with other people’s expectations, our own included?
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