They don’t always label themselves but even the most oblivious of us will eventually understand that we’ve entered a waiting room. They might look like a hallway filled with anonymous closed doors, but if we’re lucky they look like a library. I spent years (8) in the military and one of the truths of military life is ‘hurry up and wait’ which follows closely on the heels of ‘arrive 15 mins prior to 15 mins prior’. I have a lot of practice in waiting. Lots of practice does not mean I enjoy waiting but I’m good at it. One of my rules in life is to always carry a book with me. It doesn’t matter the form just make sure the form fits the function. I will not take an e-reader to the beach or the pool, that is purely paperback territory. I buy second hand paperbacks whenever possible because I am an unkind reader. I dog-ear my pages, eventually the entire book has been bookmarked ( somehow I can still find the one I just left) after I have taken the poor book’s spine and introduced it to yoga.

But when I’m not in a real waiting room my books don’t work as well. The wait can be months, or even years. I could read books the entire time but I read quickly, so much so that I often reread books dozens of times, and new books get costly. Not only that but while waiting on life to start moving again that same, still, life expects me to pay the bills, do the dishes and go outside. Books are a way of distracting myself from the tension of waiting on another’s bidding. The Doctor will see me when they get around to it and I am not to complain even if that is an hour past the scheduled appointment. My time is terribly important to me. Why? Because there are so many things in the world that I want to do that I can’t possibly get to do.

Today though, and for at least a year now, I am in an invisible waiting room.

The Bible tells a story about 10 young women who were told to wait. Now what they were waiting on seems a bit onerous to me but that’s not the important part of the story. For them, it was probably a positive goal so they didn’t want to miss what they were waiting on. Half the women were wise and brought extra oil for their lamps (or a book in my world) the other half were foolish and didn’t prepare for a long wait (no books! the fools). Inevitably the oil started to run out and the half that didn’t prepare missed the opportunity because they had to go get more oil. That’s the hard part about waiting when you’re waiting on life. How does a person continue waiting, continue being prepared without a timeline? Lamp oil was one thing, but what about snacks? What about drinks? What about all one’s other responsibilities? We can’t wait like the 10 young women. We must keep living our lives and growing while we wait.

Why bring a book? Specifically a book? For me a book is something to do while I wait. I am not pausing my mind and putting my world on hold just to wait on the Doctor. Depending on the book itself I might be furthering my goals or maybe I’m cheering myself up. Either way, my life continues and I keep moving down my path while I wait for the Doctor to see me. I could choose to do any number of things while waiting. We all find our own way. Life waiting rooms are the same. We don’t have to cease all planning, learning, choosing, or loving simply because we are stuck in something. We do not have to become passive while we wait.

I’m in the waiting room. I have no idea how long I will be here. I think it might be time to move on soon but that is what I’ve been thinking for years now. So while I’m here I might as well do what I can. And that is how we end up leaving the waiting room, we do what we can and we change our world as it changes us. Then we realize that we’re moving again and we might look back wondering how we got moving again. By that time the moment is most likely lost to the past. Remember though, there’s no right or wrong thing to be doing while we wait as long as we keep doing.