Changing What Waiting Looks Like - Part 1

Inigo Montoya really said it best, with pith and a Spanish accent: "I hate waiting."

That about sums it up, eh? There isn't a big enough font: I HATE. Waiting.

• In any line, please make it less than 2 people deep, and be sure to check cart contents before committing

• For a medical appointment of any kind

• In traffic - particularly left turn lanes with any color arrow

• For an upload

• For a download

• For a laundry load - the last 5 minutes of the cycle? I swear it's 15

• For miracles

I'm not sure we're actually wired for waiting; in fact I'm pretty sure we're not. I mean, think about babies. Talk about a creature who wants what it wants 5 minutes ago. Apparently, we came to the planet with zero capacity for waiting.

And then we wait. To turn 5 so we can go to school. WHAT were we thinking? For Halloween. For your birthday. For Christmas. For your first bicycle.

Then we wait some more. For school to get OUT. To find out if you made the team. For your first job. Your first kiss. Did I get into yet another school?

The waiting we do to master any skill is particularly vexing. This waiting involves work we very often don't really want to do. Whether it's mastering free throws, the splits, a back flip, or a Chopin nocturne, there is the legitimate pain of discipline that we have absolutely no other option but to work through. WAIT through.

And that's not even the self-mastery of holiness: compassion, empathy, forgiveness, generosity, benevolence, patience. Wait. Don't you need patience to wait? Do you have to wait for patience? Is this one of those chicken and egg things?

My most profound and important life lessons on waiting came from two completely different life events, and in different ways, underscore what I think might be at the heart of why we humans loathe waiting: usually waiting is part of a circumstance that is completely beyond our control.

But these two circumstances have also taught me that while we might not be wired to wait, we are wired to learn to wait. Thanks to divine DNA, we have inherited a very important eternal skill. And that's for a very eternal reason - we're going to need it in the future.

Story Number One:

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but there was that time 4 years ago when I spent nearly 4 months hospitalized. Any institutionalized health care setting is going to involve waiting, but when that institution becomes your zip code? OY. With the waiting. And bear in mind, half way through the fun, I was transferred to a skilled nursing facility to learn how to do everything over again. Even talking; at my worst, I was weakly pointing to an alphabet chart to communicate, and at one point, I was certain it was NOT the English alphabet.

I had to learn to breathe and swallow again before they even thought about taking out the feeding tube I'd been on for months. I needed a hoyer lift to get to daily dialysis sessions; hence, my going to a SNF 45 minutes from home. It was one of two in a 4-state area who had in-house dialysis.

I bring this all up again to tell you about the funniest thing Heavenly Father told me the night I was transferred to Heritage Park in Roy. I tell you because it has to do with the point about our waiting lessons.

I heard just two words in my head - several times - during the process of that transfer: "DAY TWO."

This statement was part of a shorthand of sorts, built through the Spirit over years of my life. Does that happen with you? I know it happens in families; one word or phrase captures an entire series of ideas or a reminder of past events. All this to facilitate brevity in communicating something complex.

Early in my adult life, I read Stephen R. Covey's Spiritual Roots of Human Relationships. In it, he writes about progressively growing into healthier relationships, and how sometimes we get impatient to move through necessary developmental stages by skipping essential first steps.

He used the analogy of the Creation - for example, how God needed to have a solid earth mass before He could cover it with water - how there needed to be a division between water and land before vegetation could be planted - how that vegetation had to be well established before it could feed animals, etc.

The shorthand created from reading that book was the idea that in our growth, we humans often impatiently want to skip Days 1-5, and land happily on Day 6, with most of the grunt work finished, poised to enjoy the fruits of the planting, and skipping the planting - including the digging, pruning, dunging - altogether.

That sounds very human of us, doesn't it? Surely, it's not just me.

On January 6, 2022, after a difficult yet tender 45-minute ride from IMC in Murray, Utah to Heritage Park in Roy, I got the distinct message from Heavenly Father, unmistakably: "DAY TWO."

Father may as well have given me an entire pep talk, but with those two words, brought to remembrance by the Holy Ghost, it was if He actually said:

"You have a long way to go, Daughter. You're just beginning this journey of recovery. Be patient,; you've got a lot of work to do. You can't skip any of the steps - you need to do all of it. I will help you and be with you every step of the way."

That was on the 64th day of my captivity. Little did I know I was still 48 days away from the day I'd walk back into my house.

Through those next seven weeks, there was a day when I remember hearing - feeling, really - DAY THREE."

Another time, when I was feeling most impatient to be finished with daily dialysis - something which made daily occupational and physical therapy far more grueling if they happened afterwards - I didn't hear a day number, but something I came to realize was connected: "I DO THINGS IN THEIR PROPER ORDER."

Impatient with the process and tired of waiting for my kidneys to function on their own, I had failed to consider the implications of what that would look like when I still couldn't sit up on the edge of my bed on my own - much less walk to a bathroom. Proper order, indeed. So grateful for the gentle reminder.

As I began to be able to sit up on my own and walk the length of the physical therapy room several times, I remember a night when I had the impression: "DAY FIVE."

Even still, that was a few weeks from my discharge. The acid test came the day before my discharge - climbing down a huge flight of concrete stairs to the boiler room and back up, on my own. The night before, the nephrologist made a special trip to my room to announce I was finished with dialysis, and wouldn't need to continue it when I went home two days later.

This singular experience taught me that there's a purpose in waiting - even in God's waiting - but I also need to talk about what Father has taught me about how to wait differently.

Learning how to wait differently has changed everything.