• Home
  • Book
  • Sermons
  • Blog
  • Consulting
  • Teaching & Speaking
  • Articles
FriarTucker

Friar's Reflections

Come here for weekly reflections on life in the church through various lenses. This is where you'll find me in some of my most immediate reactions to things we face. It's not all beautiful, but it's authentic.
Email me your thoughts!

waiting rooms

3/1/2016

0 Comments

 
The experience of hospital waiting rooms has all sorts of side effects. 

After I feel like I've sat forever (which almost always counts to eleven minutes and seventeen seconds), Sum 41's Still Waiting plunges into circulation in my head. If you don't know that song, here's my gift for you today.  
​I wait for that high school memory to fall out of that internal playlist, but that waiting is always in vain. Fortunately, not all of our waiting is met this way.

In Lent, we wait for Holy Week. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our waiting with a cross of ashes, which leads to a crown of thorns, a wooden cross, and an empty tomb. In Lent, we await a known outcome. Waiting rooms hold more of a hoped-for result, where we know how things should go, how we pray they'll go, but never quite certain because everything happens behind the veil of surgical masks, closed doors, and screens with color-coded numbers carrying ambiguous updates. 

There's also a blessing in many waiting rooms. I've learned so much about family and friends that might never have appeared without such a glut of unplanned time together. New information, delightfully odd conversations, and a chance confession all seem much more normal than alien to waiting room walls. Perhaps in the vulnerability of others as they face different procedures of various severity brings out in us a different sense of vulnerability, admitting our need for connection and desire for partnership. We rarely want to wait alone, especially when we're nervous for those that we love. 

Too often, though, we feel as though we must face these situations silently, holding our anxiety with our own fragile hands. Neither in Lent nor in hospitals is this the case, but we seem too stubborn or too afraid, or perhaps some tragic vortex of the two, to admit our needs. 

The next time you plan to wait on someone for a surgery, invite a friend, a pastor, a mentor, a family member, or anyone else who might just sit with you. Talk some. Listen some. Even just work together in the same space. There's no demand on you to face this alone. The same is true of your Lenten journeys. In your fasts, find someone to share that struggle. As you yearn for Easter, share those desires. As you struggle with the cross Jesus bears and the one you're called to bear, remember that we all bear one as we follow our Lord. Share that. Life in the church, and life in waiting rooms, is meant as life together. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Simultaneously a sinner and a saint. 

    Archives

    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Book
  • Sermons
  • Blog
  • Consulting
  • Teaching & Speaking
  • Articles