“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the Lord!” Psalm 27:14
I was in the emergency room, doubled over in excruciating pain from appendicitis. As I sat in the waiting room with my husband, I couldn’t put my head up. The chair felt as hard as a boulder as I struggled in vain to find a comfortable position. I thought to myself that I must be in the place opposite of heaven.
Then a little girl came in with her father. They sat down together, and he pulled out his phone. She was clearly hurting. She leaned over and said something to him about her pain—and he sat staring at his phone. The fog of my own discomfort began to clear as my heart filled with sorrow for this child whose father was ignoring her pain. In that moment, I realized that I was not the only one suffering in that room.
I quietly extended my hand and began to pray for the little girl, and suddenly my burden became lighter. As the veil separating me from the rest of the world lifted, I started to pray for the others who were in the hospital. So many suffering people—babies crying down the hall, elderly people wilting in wheelchairs, people coughing, moaning, alone, waiting for their turn, waiting for someone to relieve their pain. I realized that this was a chance to see and pray for people I otherwise wouldn’t be near. The Lord opened my eyes and showed me that this time in the waiting room wasn’t hell, after all. It was a chance to come closer to heaven.
My pain wasn’t gone, but praying for the people around me had changed my perspective and given me a sense of purpose. When I left the hospital the next day without an appendix, I felt blessed to have been able to pray for so many suffering people. It was God’s gift to me, rescuing me from the chains of my own misery.
My friend, Christy, has a five-year-old son with leukemia. (Please pray for little Paul.) They’ve had to go to the emergency room more times in a week than some people do in a decade. Recently, they were waiting in a room near the Trauma Center doors. Each time an ambulance with a trauma patient was on the way, the doctors and nurses would gather by the door and prepare.
“It reminded me to always be grateful when you’re waiting for the doctor,” Christy said. “When the doctors and nurses wait for the patient, that is really bad news.”
I marveled at Christy’s gratitude. She was waiting in the emergency room because her child has cancer, yet she still found the strength to open her eyes to the people around her and to be grateful for the blessings that she had, instead of turning inward and being consumed by her own suffering.
All of life, I think, is like a waiting room for heaven. We will all have times of dire emergency, when we’re suffering in such excruciating pain that earth can begin to feel like a corner of hell. Yet we are not alone. We are surrounded by other people who are suffering, too. Some of them are suffering outwardly, with illness or injury that leaves them moaning in physical pain. Some are suffering interiorly, with anguish that robs their peace and tramples their joy. Some have compassionate helpers, but many are abandoned and lonely, with no one to pray for them.
As we sit in heaven’s waiting room here on earth, we have a chance to come closer to the celestial gates. The people sitting next to us or across from us, the people walking through the doors and shuffling down the hall, the people whose voices we hear from behind the curtain, are our brothers and sisters united to us in the bond of human frailty. They are, in the words of Mother Teresa, “Jesus in distressing disguise.” With prayer and gratitude, we can help bear one another’s burdens.
While we wait for our turn to see the Divine Physician, may He grant us the grace to beg Him to bind up the wounds of everyone around us, that we may all leave this earthly hospital with the promise of eternal life—a life where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,” for “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Rev. 21:4)
