Life in a Waiting Room

I don’t mind waiting rooms so much. Usually I have a book to read or can scroll through Instagram long enough to keep me occupied. But I never want to be in a waiting room.

Waiting rooms will guarantee one or more of the following unpleasant scenarios:

1-Being surrounded by unhappy people. Does anyone ever smile in a waiting room?

2- Someone usually manipulates the remote and has the TV on a channel you care nothing about. Do you know how many sports talks I’ve had to endure in waiting rooms? Dramatic soap operas? Why is it never on HGTV?!

3-Old news everywhere. The magazines are always old. Someone got a divorce a year ago and you get the chance to read about it.

4-Tension. Whatever it is you’re waiting for, it isn’t usually pleasant. Waiting on your car to get fixed and crossing your fingers that they don’t find anything else wrong with it. Waiting to get your teeth cleaned which is probably the worst kind of routine doctor’s appointment I know of. Yes, even worse than the lady doctor. I hate that chalky paste they put on your teeth and it feels like there’s sand in your mouth the rest of the day.

Not all waiting rooms are visible.

Sometimes we’re waiting for what decision we should make. Waiting on an acceptance letter. Waiting for someone we love to change. Waiting for pain to go away. But the scenery is quite similar to that physical waiting room.

1- Misery loves company. And we’re like a magnet for it when we’re playing the waiting game. We don’t like to wait alone. So we surround ourselves with people who are frustrated by this waiting process. Or just people with whom we can freely complain and whine about our situation.

2- It never seems like we are in control. The remote is not in our hands and the ball is not in our court.

3- People who are trying to help you and offer you wisdom start to sound like a broken record. Yes, we know. It will be okay. Everything will work out. Brad and Angelina divorced. Duh. Got it. Old news. I don’t want to read that magazine again and I don’t want to hear the same stories of things working out for other people when they just aren’t working out for me right now.

4- Ah yes, tension. Anxiety. Fear. Anticipation. Questions. The unknown. It’s all there in that figurative waiting room of life. What kind of parents will we be? Will I get that job I want? Am I going to get enough money for my dream college?

Ya know what doesn’t make waiting easier? Thinking about it. Ha! If you look around in a waiting room everyone seems to be busying themselves with other things. They’re on their phones, reading books or doing cross word puzzles. It seems silly to just sit there and twiddle our thumbs and dwell on the unknown. But in the waiting room of life, we spend a lot of time thinking about the waiting. Dwelling on what we don’t know. Losing sleep over tomorrow. Journaling and scribbling endless pages of questions and concerns. Talking to our friends about it. Crying to our spouses over it.

Is that living?

The waiting room at a doctor’s office is unavoidable. And when your car is being repaired, the waiting room is the place to be. Especially if there’s free coffee.

But I believe there are a lot of times in our life where we think we should wait. But really, we should move. And get out of that waiting place. Stop pausing and start pressing play.

I’m reading Love Lives Here right now by Maria Goff and I love her words. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts so far:

“To the corporate executive who wants to be a sculptor, go get some clay. For the astronaut who wants to play the banjo, take a lesson or two. For the athlete who wants to sing opera, or the musician who wants to be a chef, go learn those things. And to the couples who want to make a career out of raising a family, go adopt or make some people. We don’t need a plan to be us, and we don’t need permission either; we just need to begin.” (From the chapter, “Keep your eyes on you own paper.” – Also, go buy this book.)

I am exactly the type of person who spends too much time waiting. Waiting for the finances to be just right. Waiting for signs in the sky before I make a decision. Waiting to hear back from my ten closest friends and their opinions before I make a move. Waiting until I’m healthy enough, happy enough, or whole enough to fulfill my desires. And I find myself now at 27 years of age wondering when Joel and I are going to make that CD. When are we going to finish projects around the house?

Sometimes it’s necessary to be in the waiting room. But in life, a lot of times, we should get up and leave. Make your own prognosis on your situation and stop waiting for someone to come report it to you.

I recently gave a student of mine a “pep talk” of sorts. She’s a senior and found herself in the waiting room of life trying to make decisions about college. At the peak of my discourse I raised my voice and said/shouted, “Life is a bull, grab it by the horns and ride it!” We giggled a little because the imagery is a bit comical. But the message behind it is true for so many of us.

What is it that you want? What are you waiting for? Find that bull’s horns and hop on my friend. Get outta that waiting room. The magazines are crappy in there anyways. 😉

Speaking of not waiting, Joel and I have wanted to paint our living room for quite some time. We decided to stop waiting and do it. We weren’t even sure about the color but we LOVE it. It’s hard to capture it in photo but it’s a lovely sea foam green/grey. We had to do a lot of redecorating to make the color work with what we had.

Here are some before pictures. They were in terrible lighting too so that just adds to the effect the weird creamy yellow walls had ha!