Waiting
Yesterday, I was waiting in the waiting room of a medical center. A couple of other people were waiting too. We Canadians often wait. We wait at the gas pump for the gas tank to fill. We wait at the ‘fast food’ counter for a meal. We wait in the airport during a layover.
I was ‘dressed’ in a ‘gown’ waiting for the technician to call my name and I wondered whether waiting was really an opportunity given by God to consider the things that are important to Him, for example, getting along with my neighbor. But my mind was wandering. I looked down at my hands folded in the folds of the medical center’s blue cotton wrap and remembered one July day (many years ago) when I ‘dressed’ in my wedding ‘gown’ to walk down the aisle and pledge my life, before God, to my fiancé. I had bathed, had my hair perfectly coiffed and topped with a flowery tiara and veil, and allowed friends to carefully zip my dress and arrange the folds.
But I was away in a different time. I shook my head to dispel my reverie and come back to the present. I looked on the table for a magazine. There were no magazines! It seems magazines are not supplied in waiting rooms any more.
The other ‘waiters’ in the waiting room got out their phones and scrolled around on them.
Where do you put your eyes when there is no magazine and you are not scrolling through Facebook? I avoided staring at my fellow waiters, but stole the odd glance. It’s strange how we try to avoid each other. We pick the seat that’s furthest from anyone else and immediately get busy with a phone, a magazine, a novel, check fingernails, anything but connect with a stranger in the clinic. My fingernails were best left alone, I had no novel or magazine and I have no data on my phone. So, I stared at the picture on the wall. The picture was frameless. It was a painting of a sort-of-white chrysanthemum on a sort-of- white background mounted on a wall that was sort- of-white. It held my attention for a while. But not for long.
My mind wandered again. The radio was playing in the background, tuned to the local radio station. A country singer was asking who would love me if he didn’t. I wondered who might love me if my husband didn’t.
Oh! Of course! You God! You never give up on me! You don’t like everything I do, but your love always reaches me. Sometimes I forget that, but your mercy and unfailing love are my constant companions.
Then a couple of commercials came on. The first was a gal reading her script advertising wedding rings from a jewellery store. She read it with a monotonous dead- pan voice, as though it were an extract from the Oxford Dictionary. The second was a guy advertising car tires. He sounded as though he had just won the $25 million lottery jackpot. I wondered, are people really more excited about choosing car tires than choosing a wedding ring?
A smile must have crinkled my face and I caught the eye of a young woman opposite me. She smiled and we laughed at the joke.
“That’s a really nice little store,” she said. “I bought a cute little necklace there for my daughter’s kindergarten teacher – better than a gift card for coffee.”
Then I told her about Ian Cunningham, one of my Grade One students who gave me his mother’s earrings as a Christmas present. We chuckled and chatted about how schools no longer teach cursive writing (or do they?) – until her name was called. We both had more to say. We enjoyed the human connection we had built. We parted with smiles.
Another woman came into the waiting room, ready to wait to be called. “Come and sit over here, next to me,” she said with a smile, “I’d like to talk to you.”
Surprised, I complied.
We chatted about the weather. She told me she walks with her dog in the mornings; how the sun tipping the snowy mountain peaks with a golden-pink glow delights her; how good God is to give us serendipities to brighten the troubles of the day.
I am glad there were no magazines in the waiting room of the medical center! God wants us to connect with Him; He wants us to connect with other people. He knows what is good for us.
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