Waiting
Waiting
Most of my disabled friends would agree that one of the hardest disciplines any of us must grapple with is patience. It’s one of those lessons we have to relearn every day, many times over.
On the mornings that Ken teaches, for instance, a friend comes to our house to do my morning routine and see me off to work. Often my friend will say something like “What a lovely day!” Or, “I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as hot today as it was yesterday.”
When I hear comments like that, I want to bounce out of bed, head for the back yard, and appraise the day for myself. I want to breathe some of that fresh morning air. I want to see my roses while they’re still covered with dew.
But it’s simply not possible. My morning routine—including exercises and bathing—chews up an hour or more before I can even get into my wheelchair. So be patient, I must!
It’s during such moments of waiting I think of all that has to be done. Do you identify with that? Sitting in the waiting (!) room at the doctor’s office you remember half a dozen phone calls you need to make. Parked in a long line of stop-and-go traffic on the freeway you think of all the stuff you need to pick up at the market on the way home—and the time is getting late.
It’s a fact. Waiting is not an easy thing to do.
I’ve spent so much of my time waiting in a bed or waiting in a wheelchair. After my diving injury, I waited to be moved from the intensive care unit into a regular hospital room. After three months of waiting there, I was finally moved to a rehabilitation center. While in rehab, I waited every day to go to occupational and physical therapy. In the evenings, I’d wait for friends or family to come in for a visit. And it seemed as though I was waiting forever to go home.
Waiting. Unfortunately, most of us associate the word with phrases like “hanging around” or “killing time.” We get a mental picture of leaning up against a wall with our arms folded, yawning, occasionally glancing at our watch.
But there’s far more to waiting than lounging around until we receive what we hope for. George Matheson wrote insightfully about the manner in which we should wait.
We commonly associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. Yet there is a patience that I believe to be harder—the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength. But I know of something that implies a strength greater still. It is the power to work under stress, to continue under hardship, to have anguish in your spirit and still perform daily tasks. This is a Christlike thing. The hardest thing is that most of us are called to exercise patience, not in the sick bed, but in the street.
Waiting is something more than “counting flowers on the wall,” as the old song goes. It takes courage to live out our patience on the street, to wait and yet still remain active and involved.
“Wait on the LORD,” Psalm 27:14 tells us, “be of good courage” (KJV). Those times we find ourselves having to wait on others may be perfect opportunities to train ourselves to wait on the Lord. Instead of fidgeting and fuming, we could use such moments to pull Bible verses out of our memory, or learn more of God’s Word. I’m not talking about the mechanical repetition of words, but actually weaving biblical truth into the fabric of our day.
Wait on the Lord in prayer as you sit on the freeway, sharing with Him the anxiety of so many jobs to be done in such a short time. Watch your frustrations melt into praise as you sing hymns and choruses for His ears alone.
By exercising this kind of patience, rooted in God’s Word, we can say with the psalmist, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope” (Psalm 130:5).
So …
if you’re single and waiting for marriage …
if you’re a preteen and waiting for high school …
if you’re stuck in your career and waiting for a break …
if you’re parked in a wheelchair and waiting for a push …
if you’re married and waiting for your husband to change …
make sure you keep living while you’re waiting.
It takes courage to wait patiently and yet get out there and embrace life. But you can do it. Lean on God and courage will never be in short supply.