Living in the Layover

Raise your hand if you like to wait. Go ahead. Raise it high. Then feel free to move on past this blog today. Because this one goes out to all of us who have gotten impatient in the grocery line, tapped our foot while the microwave cooks, or found ourselves lost in an airport until the weather clears.

Raise your hand if you like to wait. Go ahead. Raise it high. Then feel free to move on past this blog today. Because this one goes out to all of us who have gotten impatient in the grocery line, tapped our foot while the microwave cooks, or found ourselves lost in an airport until the weather clears.

The word wait derives from "to watch, to be awake." But, how often do we try to anesthetize ourselves when we come across a patch of waiting? Not watching but wishing we could just sleep until we move on. Not awake to any stirrings within but just the stirring feeling that we’re wasting time.

The impatience comes because waiting feels like being stuck in-between—going nowhere currently but on the way to somewhere, just as soon as the wait is over. It seems like a pause on life, so we try to find a way to be functional, a way to live. Like reading magazines in line, washing dishes until the microwave dings, or emailing until cleared for takeoff. We are a do or die kind of people, and without the do, we certainly can feel like we’re dying.

But living isn’t doing, is it? Simply put, living is breathing. The in and out of existence has little to do with whether or not we have something tangible to show for every minute of the day. As Christians, we should know that we need to take moments of quiet, silence, and rest, but as microwave cookers, we do not.

I’ve always loved (and hated) Psalm 40 for the simple fact that David "waited patiently" for God and then was pulled out of the muck and mire. That’s right, "waited patiently" while in a less than wonderful situation. Interestingly, the NET Bible translates that as "relied completely" on God. Makes sense though, because in this situation, the two are parallel: there is no waiting patiently on God unless one is relying completely on Him too.

So, as I find myself in one big layover in life (living at the in-laws until the go ahead to move to Taiwan, working temp type jobs, and possibly moving to my parent’s soon, like switching airports might make us get to the final destination faster), I want to stop drumming my fingers and look for something more.

Wait time can be beautiful (still painful at times, but beautiful). It can be a time to declutter, get quite, connect with those around us, connect with God, and simply rest. Because as waiting starts to equal complete reliance, then we’ve found a beautiful place with God and life is breathed into that wait, even at the post office.

So, the rest of us better go ahead and raise our hands now. Because if we can find life in the wait, then there will be no more wasting as we wait—just living and relying. And who doesn’t like that?