God Is in the Waiting Room

“Come on back,” the nurse says, ushering us into the triage room. He checks my son’s temperature and vitals, and leads us to another small room where we wait.

We peel off our winter coats. Anxiety squeezes tight in my chest as I watch my feverish son and try not to let my mind tumble into the worst what-ifs. He has a chronic illness and a compromised immune system. Every high fever wins us a trip to the emergency room. I shift on the plastic chair and try to remember everything I know about who God is.

God is good. God is near. God is in the wait.

And we wait.

We wait to be seen by a nurse, then a medical student, then a doctor. We wait for labs. We wait for chest X-rays. We wait for a diagnosis. We wait for an IV. We wait for medicine. We wait for news.

We wait. And wait. And wait.

I try to pray, but my heart could run laps over the beeping monitor my son is hooked up to.

I take a deep breath. Make a joke with a nurse. Try to be a calming presence instead of an anxious one. Watch cartoons with my teenage son as the clock passes 11 p.m., then midnight.

“It’s a new day,” my son says, watching the time tick by.

We don’t know if there will be a hospital admission. We don’t know what’s causing the fever.

We wait.

Sometimes the only prayer we can pray is borrowed from David’s in Psalm 13:1: How long, O Lord?

This life of ours is rife with waiting. Advent teaches us that sitting in the waiting room is holy — that the ache for things to be made right is part of our story as people of God.

Our hearts beat for the One who makes all things new, the Light who “shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it” (John 1:5 NLT). The One who breathes peace into every anxious corner of our lives.

Just when I begin to think we’re spending the night in the emergency room, a doctor walks in. The waiting culminates in good news: we can monitor at home.

For centuries, creation held its breath, waiting for the incarnation — the breaking in of God in human form. As the prophet Isaiah says, “Those who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2 NLT).

One emergency room visit didn’t instantly cure my son’s pneumonia, and it sure didn’t take away his chronic illness. It took more medicine, more time, more waiting. As I write this, he’s still home from school, waiting for his body to heal.

This is our life: we wait, and we wait some more. Jesus broke into our world so many years ago, and still we wait for Him to come again. We light the Advent candles and wait for Christmas to remember the birth of the Prince of Peace. We wait to experience even the faintest glimmer of the fullness of time breathed into our weary world.

What are you waiting for right now? Hope where there seems to be none? Peace for your weary soul? The ability to laugh again without forcing it?

Maybe you’re waiting for test results or for a relationship to heal. Maybe you’re waiting to finally exhale after months of stress. Maybe you’re waiting for clarity on a decision, for a job to come through, for a season of loneliness to lift, or simply for one night of uninterrupted sleep.

Whatever it is you’re waiting for, you are not alone in the ache.

Christmas is so near — the manger is closer than it has been all year. We’re almost there. Yes, we wait. But as Advent reminds us, year after year, we do not wait as people without hope.

Borrow this breath prayer as you wait:

INHALE: God of hope

EXHALE: We wait for You

As you move through this day and toward Christmas, remember: Immanuel — God with us — sits with you in the waiting room.