The Waiting Room: Learning the Art of Contentment

Written by Ben Young

This article is courtesy of Christian Single magazine.

Remember the good old days when dating was easy? If some “hottie” caught your eye, all you had to do was reach into your desk, pull out a piece of construction paper and scribble a simple note: “I love you. Do you love me? Circle yes or no.” Oh the joys of elementary school love. Back then, there were no games, no “I’ll call you tomorrow” and, best of all, no waiting.

If you’re like most people in our frantic society, you probably hate to wait. You hate it when your car is in the shop and you have to bide your time in a smoke-filled waiting room, drinking diesel-flavored coffee from a Dixie cup while your fellow “waiters” are glued to the Jerry Springer lesbian wrestling show blaring above you. You hate it when you catch a cold and schedule an appointment with your doctor for your lunch break. When you arrive with minutes to spare, you’re told to take your seat until your M.D. is available. Once again you’re stuck in a waiting room — that serves not coffee but a wide variety of airborne illnesses — until the nurse calls your name.

However, the coldest and loneliest waiting room on the planet has to be the Dating Waiting Room. You dreamed of being married in your mid 20s and being a parent in your 30s but are now approaching the big 3-0 or 4-0 birthday and there isn’t a sane, available prospect in sight. You kissed dating goodbye, hoping the hyper spiritual route would get you there, but nooooooo. Now you find yourself stuck in the Dating Waiting Room with its bad coffee and bad shows, where no one ever calls your name.

A lot of strange things happen while you sit there waiting for Mr. or Miss Right to come along. Your mom frequently calls you on your cell phone, often closing her conversation with these comforting words: “Don’t you think it’s about time you find someone and settle down?” Or your married friends at church pop their heads into the Waiting Room, urging you to go out with someone they met who’s “just perfect for you.”

People respond to the Waiting Room in a variety of ways — some constructively and some destructively. The constructive method makes you engage life. The destructive route makes the Waiting Room a prison cell that stifles your relationship with God and your friends, your job and your health. Here’s how it happens.

3 Destructive Ways to Handle Life in the Waiting Room

1. You lower the bar.

After years of watching her friends get married off, Susan has grown sick and tired of the wait and is now going to take her love life into her own hands. She places personal ads in the paper, joins an online dating service and hits the club scene at night with her cronies from work. Gone are Susan’s high standards for a man with a strong relationship with Christ and rock-solid character. She’s lowered the bar so that an ant could leap over it with ease. If you panic and lower the bar while waiting on The One, you’ll pay a dear price for a very long time. It’s much better to be single and lonely at times than married and miserable for life. Whatever you do, don’t compromise your standards by lowering the bar.

2. You start to disconnect.

When you dwell too much on the things you long for but lack in your life, it’s easy to disconnect from the real world and live life through ways that seem more exciting than yours. Many of us have the tendency in this high-tech culture to overdose on the Internet, movies or the tube. Instead of savoring and dealing with real life, we live our dreams and fantasies through celebrities and their stories. This may be your problem if you know more about the characters on “Friends” or “Seinfeld” than you do about your real-life friends. Or even more serious — you don’t have many close friends.

Living vicariously through the lives and activities of fictional characters will distract you from dealing with what’s really important in your life. You can become passive at socializing or participating in activities, opting to plan your schedule around TV shows and chatroom meetings. So put down the remote, shut down your laptop, cut up your movie rental cards and get back in the game of real life.

3. You take a dip in denial.

This is the hyper-spiritual approach to dealing with the stench of the Dating Waiting Room. All you need to do is put a fake grin on your face and start quoting a bunch of Bible verses when friends ask you the simple question, “How are you doing today?”

There’s nothing wrong with a big smile (unless you left the dental bleach on too long) and a passion for memorizing Scripture. The point is — if you desire to find a soul mate and it hasn’t happened — it’s OK to say, “Yeah, I’m a little disappointed.” Masking your desire for a relationship won’t cause it to go away. Pull yourself out of the river of denial and get in touch with what’s going on inside of you.

Now that you know what not to do, take a look at the main constructive key to handling life in the Waiting Room.

Learn to Love Your Own Grass

God has given everyone a plot of land — a bit of grass, if you will, that serves as the context of your life. The problem is that most people — married, single, widowed and divorced — don’t love their own grass. It’s trite but true: We all want what we don’t have. Aristotle said, “It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most human beings live only for the gratification of it.”

Consequently there are millions of singles dying to get married and millions of married couples dying to be single. In the meantime, no one’s happy or content with his own grass. Everyone is looking over the fence for greener grass. Most people can’t come to grips with this harsh reality: There ain’t no greener grass! Every pasture — married and single — has to deal with the messy, stinky stuff Texans call cow patties (the Greek word is skubala).

Marriage is not going to make you happy; it will simply make you married. Satisfaction in this life isn’t found in being “happily married” or “free and single.” True satisfaction or contentment comes through knowing Christ. The desire to be married and have a family are OK, and it’s healthy to own up to them, but don’t allow them to dominate your life so that you miss the life going on around you. If you’re in the Waiting Room, stop peering over the fence and pining to be in the married pasture.

But how, you might ask, am I supposed to love my own grass? Glad you asked. Here you go.

3 Ways to Love Your Own Grass

1. Pour out your heart to God.

It won’t do you a bit of good to stifle your thoughts and feelings about how much you hate your plot of grass. If you aren’t happy with the context of your life, if you’re sick and tired of waiting — talk about it with God and a good friend or pastor.

King David had some hard times in his life and poured his thoughts into Psalms. Read Psalm 13:1-2 and Psalm 38:8-11 and observe how honest David was about what he was going through. He basically says, “My heart is crushed, my strength is zapped, and God, it feels like You’ve left me.” Write down how you feel right now in a journal or on a piece of paper. Or talk to a close friend or pastor. But whatever you do, don’t bottle up your feelings and let them fester. Pour out your heart to God and allow Him to bear your burden.

2. Pour yourself into others.

The key to living a life of misery and loneliness is simple — just look out for yourself. If you’d rather sidestep that lifestyle, turn away from that mirror and look at the needs of others. Shari got tired of the waiting game in her early 20s, so she rolled up her sleeves and started serving people in the inner city. At the time, she didn’t know the inner city from the inner ear, but through the years God has used her in a phenomenal way to impact the lives of young people living in poverty and despair. As a result, Shari has a new outlook on life and a joy she never knew before.

Try it yourself. Serving others can realign your perspective to see the big picture rather than your own little world. Plenty of people need your help, talents and company. They may be street people, prisoners, single parents, folks in retirement homes or youths who need a mentor. Stop griping and start giving. Make a difference in the lives of others, not to mention your own, by abandoning your couch to serve others.

3. Practice the art of contentment.

Paul talks about this in Philippians 4:11-13, writing from a jail cell that wasn’t exactly the Ritz Carlton. He says it’s only through the power of Christ living in you that you can learn to be content. Contentment is a decision of your will followed by a process. You have to continually choose to be content, meaning it may not be the natural response to your circumstances.

The secret to contentment isn’t in your relational status or your current circumstances. Author Lori Smith defines contentment as “being OK with something (or a lot of things) you’re not OK with. It’s being satisfied with what you have.” In other words, it’s learning to love your own grass. Make the choice each day to love your own grass through the strength God gives you.

Life is not always easy. If you’re dating or not dating, or if you’re married or single, the secret to waiting is to love your own grass. What are you waiting for? Go pour your heart out to God and pour yourself into others. And choose to practice the art of contentment. You might find life in the Waiting Room is a good place to be.

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