The Waiting Room

Life is sometimes like being stuck in a waiting room for hours and hours, staring at the walls, memorizing the art-work, and wondering when the hell your name is going to be called.  Everyone experiences the waiting game at some point in life, especially after having done all the growing up, trying new things and screwing up lots of things.  Screwing up is the key there.  Screwing up is often what lands our  judgment impaired asses right back in that hard, uncomfortable waiting room chair with not so much as an outdated issue of Vogue to thumb through.  Screwing up isn't fun.  It isn't easy, and fixing our screw-ups often takes time.

The set-backs we have in life, whether we create them on our own or whether they happen by circumstance, can serve a purpose.  Before you roll your eyes and stop reading here, remember: Everyone is sick of hearing that our trials make us stronger and that mistakes teach us important lessons, and that God is preparing us for something awesome, He just has to bully us around a little bit to make sure we deserve the Prize....You get the gist.  No one wants to be told that his long-suffering, ever grateful attitude through troubles and trials will someday pay off.  The truth is, we don't really know if that's true.  Lots of people have had terrifically horrible lives where things happened to them that they didn't deserve, and for many of them, life never got any better.

Take, for example, the short life of a 13 year old Ethiopian girl, whose mother abandoned her at age 3 and whose father died when she was only 9 years old.  Hana, later known as Hana Williams after an American family from Washington state adopted her, never had an easy life. When  Larry and Carri Willliams, a Fundamentalist Christian couple with 7 biological children decided they wanted to continue to grow their family past Carri's physical ability to bear children, they turned to adoption. Specifically, to adopting a young deaf Ethiopian boy they had seen in a video.  Around that same time, they also saw Hana, a pretty Ethiopian girl whom they claimed they also wanted to give a better life.  Soon after their new daughter became part of their family, she started her period for the first time.  This apparently angered Carri Williams, who, according to a friend stated that she thought she was adopting a sweet little girl, not a half-grown woman.  Hana endured harrowing abuse at the hands of her adoptive family, being locked in a closet where sermons and scripture were piped in for hours, some say even days at a time.  She was beaten, ignored, starved, forced to use an out-house and bathe outside in the hose with no privacy, and eventually sent outdoors on a cold May afternoon, where her "family" watched out the window as she succumbed to hypothermia and died after falling and hitting her head numerous times.   They later began to abuse the 10 year old deaf boy they had adopted as well, but because of investigations into Hana's death, the boy was removed from the home and placed with another family.  If you have the stomach to read more about Hana's experience you can do so here .

What purpose could Hana's suffering have possibly had?  The pain and abandonment she endured did not shape and mold her into a strong young woman of character who took her horrible childhood experiences and turned them into an inspiring life-story of reaching out to other children who were hurting.  Hana's suffering served her no good purpose at all.  For this poor girl, and for many people all over the world, those who die young and those who live to old age, the purpose of life--the very definition of life, is suffering.  Do you think any of these people want to hear you talk about how their pain and suffering will someday be "worth it?"

We all screw up, and bad things happen to everyone at some point or another.  You don't have to be happy about your consequences or circumstances.  Sometimes there are no obvious steps to take to change an unpleasant situation.  Other times, there are options, but no matter which one you take, you're going to be screwed.  There are times when there's nothing you can do but wait out a bad situation and see how it turns out in the end.  The only thing you can change about your wait, is the way you spend it.

We keep hearing all the time that our trials help us grow, but it is really those in-between times, after a loss or a big mistake, that we incorporate what we have experienced into who we are.  We can dwell on what we have lost indefinitely, we can drown ourselves in shame and guilt over our mistakes, or we can throw our hands up and accept life, let it use us, the same way life used Hana to rescue 8 other children from the hands of two horrible, evil abusive parents.  We think we always deserve to know the reason for everything, and we tend to get impatient with waiting for whatever trial we are suffering to be over.  But we aren't entitled to know everything, even about our own lives.  What about just acknowledging that you are here for a purpose, and that you may never really understand what that purpose is?

Hana Williams in Ethiopia

What if the waiting we wail and complain about so much is not a curse, but a blessing?  Maybe instead of lamenting what we don't have yet, we could spend more of our time being grateful for what we already have and what we have had the pleasure of experiencing.  Maybe, just maybe the wait we lament so bitterly isn't waiting at all.  Maybe the waiting room is where life really happens.