The waiting room
There is a time in which the world seems to stop, or perhaps it spins wildly out of control. It can be a time when the how's and why's of the universe can open up to the view and revel its secrets. It is the waiting room. A magical place that exists not only in the doctor's and dentist's office but at any time in which there is a transition.
It can be the days of travel between moving, or the months between high school and college, or the real world. This waiting room can be hard and frustrating, even sorrowful. It could be filled with joy and expectation. Today many of the people I love will be entering the waiting room as the graduate from college and move on to bigger and better things. Others, like me, will be preparing to leave to spend time in the real world trying to make money to pay for the next year's term. Others are preparing to gain support as they six months over seas in their internship.
Our waiting rooms will spend from hours to months. As we hold our breath and wait for the gun to send us off the blocks into the race.
The hours or days, weeks or months will be hard, frustrating, and sad. We leave behind the friendships we have made in the years we have spent together. Like a child looking out the back of truck. Watching longingly as the friends and familiar buildings sink slowly into the distance and then beyond the horizon. Goodbyes are a part of the waiting room. They are the port of entry, just as hellos are the exit sign.
The waiting room is also full of joy, expectation, and peace. It is not all tears. In My Friend Totoro two young girls hide amongst their belongings in the back of a moving truck giggling as they dream about the spirits that may live in the house they are moving into.
Whatever the transition, a job transfer, or a graduation there is a waiting room. It is our choice to focus on the lost, the good byes or the new beginning waiting to be born.
This is what we can learn in the wait room. To start something new, something must end. Just as there is nothing more sad then death, there is nothing more precious them new life. Yes there is sadness in the endings we have, but there is also joy.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. In the never ending story there is a character whose name is Dame Eyola. She will never know what it is like to be a mother, not a daughter. To give birth she must first wither and die just as her mother did to bring her into being.
It is sad, to know that something precious is fading into death, but something better is coming. "If a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it produces a rich harvest." (John 12:24) Only through death can new life come.
When you find yourself in a waiting room morn your lost, but rejoice for something new is coming. Something better is coming. And that is something to celebrate!
