You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
You know that Dr. Seuss book, Oh the Places You’ll Go!? It’s the favorite Seuss volume of graduates everywhere. Someone gave me a copy when I graduated from high school, and I’ve thought about this part a lot over the (many) years since. The Waiting Place. I have spent a lot of my 20s in the waiting place, and it was good to remember these rhymes every so often and feel like it was normal to be waiting.
But I have a bone to pick with the good Doctor. Because I don’t think that The Waiting Place is useless.
I wouldn’t trade my time in The Waiting Place. The Waiting Place is where we are refined. It’s where we cry out and wrestle and suffer. It’s where we are taught patience. We learn to hope in God while we wait. We see his goodness and faithfulness to us as he responds to our cries of frustration and heartache. We learn to be still and know that he is God here. Life is lived in The Waiting Place, where we hope for what we do not yet see and wait for it with patience.
Or not. And if we don’t then I guess we really are just waiting for a bus to come or a plane to go. Or waiting around for a Yes or No.
What are you waiting for?
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