When I started this blog, I said it would have a diversity of topics. In the past couple of months I've had a lot of ideas as to what I would write about next, but the one thing that has cropped up in my head most recently is the one I think I will talk about now. It's waiting. That's right: waiting. This is the time of year when people of certain faith traditions celebrate a time of waiting. For Christians, it is the Lenten season, a time of waiting for the second coming of Christ. For people of the Jewish faith, Passover will be here soon, which is a time of waiting for the initial coming of a savior from God.I am involved in a class that has chosen Holly Whitcomb's book, "The Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting". Lest you think this is a book devoted solely to the waiting of a savior, I encourage you to read and investigate further. Waiting is something we all do, whether we like it or not, for a variety of reasons. It is also something Americans are more just a little poor at doing. And being an American, I find myself being atrocious at doing. If you are like me, then read on. I think you'll find this interesting.
The book is not very long and is broken down into seven areas or chapters: patience, loss of control, living in the present, compassion, gratitude, humility, and trust in God. Again, if you are like me, that first one alone is enough to make you want to start your own blog just to sound off about what a precious commodity patience is and how lacking we find ourselves with it.
I'll start off by saying our class so far has not gotten beyond the introduction and the first chapter (patience), so I won't be going very far into the book itself. If it interests you, buy it. If not, don't. Whitcomb is a Christian author, but major chucks of the book could be appreciated and applied to anyone, religiously-affiliated or not. For example, how often have you taken an off-ramp to get off the freeway just to avoid being stuck in traffic and not moving? Me. Not as if you save anytime (I rarely do) because now you have traffic lights and other hindrances to speed, but just to keep moving and not be sitting or moving too slow. How about waiting in line at the grocery store? If you feel the line is moving too slow, do you pick another line, then another? Maybe you even go complain to the store manager. How about when you have your car serviced - do yell at the guy who tells you it's going to be at least another hour? Sound familiar? Hmmm?
As I began reading and discussing this book (I'm not the teacher in the class), I started thinking about cultural differences between Americans and other people in the world who wait. So have many other people in the class. How long is too long to wait to be seen by a physician? Ever been stuck waiting for an hour before being seen by a dentist? Longer? Do you know, or have you ever stopped to think about how long people in other countries wait for things like being seen by a health-professional? One person in the class relayed how an optometrist or opthamologist on a mission trip to Mexico would have people waiting in line for literally 24 hours in the hot sun because eye care is so scarce in Mexico. They bring their whole families and wait in line for hours, days. And they don't complain; they think nothing of it. You think it's only Mexico? How long do you think you'd have to wait to get an MRI scan or have knee surgery if you went to Canada? I'm a health-professional and I know a thing or two about waiting from both sides of the glass. My point is not to trash socialized medicine but rather to point out how much Americans, myself included, naturally expect within our minds that various activities will (or should) only take a certain amount of time. And when they take longer, guess what: it's the beginning of road-rage, going postal, and just plain anti-social. When is the last time you got through the DMV in less than 20 minutes? Clearly, workers in government don't seem to be in much of a hurry. We often think of that attitude as some sort of crime against humanity, but maybe if we slowed down more, we'd all find a happy medium.
I know, I'm talking about asking a lot of ourselves. We live in an age of drive-thru's, micro-wave dinners, ATM's, and 10 second commercials. If the music video goes more than 3 minutes, count me out - I'm flipping the channel (another way to speed things up). Patience is, indeed, a virtue, primarily because so few of us have it. And when we want patience, we want it now! But over the last few weeks, I've been working at really assessing why I might be in a hurry and is it really necessary. I don't get as anxious driving to some place. I turn off the loud, head-banging music and put on something more calming and soothing. I suppose we tend to be in a hurry, in part, not just because of our culture and society, but because our lives in this world are finite. We know our time is limited here. We're reminded of it often by the deaths of people we know and, once again, by commercials that feed into that fear of not having enough time to accomplish all that we want.
Whether you choose to check out Whitcomb's book is completely up to you. I have no bias towards it or any other book of its type. But, for today at least, think about what motivates you to be in such a hurry. "Take time to smell the roses", someone once said. I invite you to just take some time, period. Relax, take your time, and try not to force the world into your schedule. Maybe even show up a little late for something. I doubt it will kill you. It hasn't hurt me.
