God's Waiting Room, Part 2 of 3

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
And in His word I do hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
More than those who watch for the morning—
Yes, more than those who watch for the morning.
Psalm 130:5-6

Fast Forward to 2004. It is now thirty years later.

I had now been happily married for 23 years. My son, Michael, was happily married and we now had three grandchildren. We had moved to the country in 1993 and my parents moved in with us. Daddy had moved on to heaven in 2002. Mother still lived with us. The past thirty years had flown by.

It had been a wonderful thirty years. During those years I worked at UOP for nearly 25 years. I traveled to the Holy Land, the Middle East, Europe, Mexico, went on a cruise to the Bahamas. I had played the piano for many churches, taught Sunday School, and have many lifetime Christian friends. Mother and I began speaking together at churches and eventually I went on alone. David and I taught financial seminars for twenty years at various colleges. We went on three vacations in all those years. That's how busy we've always been. And yet so close.

I remained a student of the Bible even during the busyness of life, and I had been in God's Waiting Room a couple of times. I will tell you about the most recent one.

I decided to early-retire in 2004. David had a secure position, our finances and future seemed secure (Wrong! but that's another story...), and Mother was at home alone while I was at work now, and she was partially disabled. I needed to be at home more.

I had everything planned, the things I would do when I retired. Or so I thought - until the Lord nipped that whole thing in the bud, slammed that door shut, and before I knew it I was back in the Waiting Room. By this time in my life I wasn't even disappointed because I knew what that meant. I just wondered if I would be too old to do anything by the time I 'got out.' Well, it wasn't my problem. The Lord is in charge.

Back into the Waiting Room I went.

Mother, who was 91, was restricted to a wheelchair 100% of the time when I retired in 2004. Those were days I wouldn't trade for anything. She was my best friend. We spend many hours talking about spiritual things, politics, family, everything. She was mentally as sharp as she had always been. Many friends and relatives came to visit during those years, and for the first time in my adult life I was at home. What a blessing those years were for both of us. The greatest gift the Lord has ever given me was my Christian heritage.

There were two of us in the Waiting Room now. Mother and me.

I was able to spend many hours in research and Bible study during those years. Soon it got to the point where I was afraid to leave her for even an hour. I knew this was hard on my husband, but he never complained. He was like a son to my parents. They were very close. A man like that doesn't grow on trees.

Finally, in 2006, Mother had what the doctor thought was a series of small strokes, and in her delirium was taken to Hospice House in Stockton. Everyone thought she was dying, but over an eight-week period she completely recovered. Due to her deteriorating debilitative arthritis, however, her physical condition had become such that she needed 24/7 nursing. When she came out of Hospice House we had to put her in Skilled Nursing in the same facility that she and my father had lived in for a while, which made the transition easier because she knew so many people there.

I had always wanted her to be at home as long as she lived, so this was very difficult for me. I made the trip to see her in Stockton two or three times each week for the next two years. We would have lunch together and visit for a couple of hours. We would always be deep in animated conversation, and I know that everyone wondered what in the world we always found to talk about. What a privilege it was to have my parents for so many years, to have access to such quality and wisdom. What a blessing.

Then one day she took to her bed and five days later she was in the Lord's presence. She and I both knew she was going, and we had a wonderful five days. I never mourned or cried. How could I? I knew where she was going and knew that I would see her again. It was a tender and beautiful experience. As the Lord had done so often before, His hand just lifted me up above the circumstances and sustained me above and beyond the natural human realm.

Yes, in 2002 God had other plans for me. He would provide His precious child - my saintly mother - with my constant care. She would have at her side the one person on earth who loved her almost as much as He did. He provides for His own. Yes he does.

I've been in God's Waiting Room for eight years this time.

How rich it has been. How much I have learned. It may be true that I spend so much time on heavenly things that I'm no earthly good. It may be that the next time the Lord calls me out it will be when He comes to reign and rule right here on earth. I think that will be very soon.

A Citizen of Heaven

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ..." Philippians 3:20


Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.

God's Waiting Room, Part 1 of 3

"The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him." Lamentations 3:25

Do you wait well?

One of the most important and profound lessons I have learned as a Christian is how to wait.

I am not a naturally patient person. In fact, in my younger days, impatience was a hallmark of my nature. I am by nature an "action" person. I see a problem, decide on a course of action, and I want it done NOW. I set out immediately to get it accomplished. Grass never grew under my feet. This does not work well when one is dealing with the Lord because He requires you to act on His plan rather than on your own plan.

When you see how He works, you learn to love God's Waiting Room. And you learn that if you are willing to wait He leads you in a direction you never would have dreamed of on your own. I will give you two examples from my own experience.

I have played the piano since I was six years old. (I took violin lessons, too, but my dad made me quit those. He couldn't stand the noise.) Some time in the mid 1970s I was looking around to get involved in something new, and it wasn't happening. I was working full-time, had been involved in the pro-life movement, had almost completed a degree in Computer Systems Analysis going to night school, played the piano for First Baptist Church in Stockton, was involved with Concerned Women For America, and much more.

All of a sudden several of those activities wound down. And, after going through a university-wide computer conversion at my job as an accountant at UOP, and seeing the systems people being called in the middle of the night to come down and solve a problem, I decided that was not something I wanted to do. I quit my computer course just two classes short of that degree.

Now I had suddenly gained some blocks of time that I wanted to fill and began casting around for some new interest. Nothing emerged. Zip, zilch, nada.

It was around this time that I really began to take my Christian life very seriously, and so I began to pray about it. What was it that the Lord wanted me to do? I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to spend my first spell in God's Waiting Room.

I have always loved to read but figured I could do more of that when I got 'old.' But, the Lord was able to get through to me that I needed to study. And so I became commited to have regular devotions -- prayer and Bible study. Now when I commit myself to something there's nothing in the world that's going to get in my way. And I threw myself into it with my characteristic zeal.

Not only did I have my scheduled devotions, but I found myself spending hour upon hour reading the Bible and studying commentaries. To my great amazement it turned out to be -- and still is -- the most absolutely fascinating thing I've ever done. I was seriously hooked on God's Word! The whole thing...Old and New Testaments. The first time through, some of it was a little tough, but slowly the Lord opened it up for me. I spent every spare minute in it.

I didn't even know it ... but I was in the Waiting Room. And I stayed there for a couple of years. I could have stayed forever.

One evening the phone rang and it was a man named Stan Dennis. He had heard of me through a mutual friend and wanted to know if I would be interested in playing piano for a traveling gospel group, The Crusaders. Well, I was completely honest and told him I would be thrilled to do that but I was positive that I was not the person they wanted, since everyone in the group played their instruments by ear, and I played strictly from written music. And yet he persisted. When I hung up I wondered how it had happened that I had agreed to go to just one practice and meet everyone. I knew it would be a waste of everyone's time and almost called him back and cancelled.

I didn't know it at the time, but the Lord had just opened the door of the Waiting Room and was calling me out.

The next week I showed up and met the four others in the group and proceeded to have the most frightening and humiliating scene in my life. It was awful. They gave me written words with chords written in by hand. I didn't have a clue what to do with it. It wasn't 'regular' music ... there were no notes ... I had never heard the songs before ... there was no 'time signature' telling the rhythm or beat ... and they began to sing and play their instruments. At some point I had the idea maybe we could record them doing the songs and I could work at home from the tape, so that is what we did.

Somehow the session ended. It was impossible to believe they actually wanted me to come back for another practice. I think this was the first time in my life that I had ever really failed at anything and I felt like a miserable failure. It was terrible. Unbearable.

Yet - somehow the indomitable spirit rose up in me and I was determined to work from those tapes and learn how to do this. After all, my name isn't Carole (Noel...Song) for nothing! I worked as if my life depended on it during that week, listening to those tapes probably hundreds of times and trying to work out the chords from the home-made music sheets and play along.

I didn't feel great about it by the time the next session rolled around but it was a challenge. I wasn't as good at the practice session as I thought I had been at home, but it was a cut above the week before. (It would have been impossible for it to have been worse.) Somehow we got through it, but I pressed upon them my offer to just back out. They refused to hear it. The third week was another cut above the second week.

I traveled with the Crusaders for over 15 years. We were gone almost every Sunday to churches throughout California. I had to stop playing for First Baptist. My son, Michael, was at that critical age of transition from adolescent to teen, and I was a single mom. He joined the group and we were able to do that wonderful Christian work together for several years. I composed all of the arrangements, learning to not only play by chord only, but learning how to turn the wonderful 'freedom from notes' into a personal expression of gratitude, through music, to that beautiful Holy Spirit who was teaching me Himself.

I went on to play for some fantastic choirs and with a contingent from the Stockton Symphony.

I never played the piano the same way again. The Lord had taken me and my gift and had transformed both.

It was several years later before I realized that I had been in God's Waiting Room, a room I have returned to often at His beck and call. A room I have come to love.

A Child of the King

^" Therefore I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; My God will hear me." Micah 7:7


Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.