Eileen Button - The Waiting Place: Learning to Appreciate Lifes Little Delays

PRAISE FOR THE WAITING PLACE

This is a collection of essays written by a woman with great heart, intelligence, and honesty. You might want to keep them at your bedside, like a box of literary bonbons, and read one a night as I did. Many will make you laugh out loud, at least one will make you weep, and all of them will enlarge your life in the way that reading thoughtful writing does. Bonus: no weight gain.

ELIZABETH BERG
Author, Once Upon A Time, There Was You

Eileen Buttons The Waiting Place is the shaft of sunlight on the cloudy day, a glimpse of possibility amidst difficulty. She is the wise woman of the village to whom we all repair when perspective and patience are needed.

PHILIP GULLEY
Author, If the Church Were Christian

If Eileen Button is rightand I think she iswe find God not in some neatly resolved resolution but in our nebulous, uncertain questions. A beautiful collection of poignant and sometimes funny essays that string together like beads into an astonishingly lovely and honest memoir, TheWaiting Place reminds us that God is everywhereespecially in the valleys of life. If youve ever prayed by a childs bedside, questioned your (or your husbands) ministry, gutted out loving your imperfect family of origin, you need the humor and insight of this book.

KERI WYATT KENT
Speaker and author, Rest

When you finish a book and find that you miss the author the way youd miss a friend, thats good writing. The Waiting Place gets better with every page and ended sooner than I wanted it to.

SHAUNA NIEQUIST
Author, Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet

Eileen Button is a master at her craft, and The Waiting Place is a masterpiece. Agonizingly beautiful, side-splittingly funny, this book is the perfect companion while we wander around our own waiting places.

CARYN DAHLSTRAND RIVADENEIRA
Author, Grumble Hallelujah and Mamas Got a Fake I.D.

Eileens writing style is an engaging blend of humor and poignancy. TheWaiting Place effectively reminded me not just to slow down but to giggle while taking my foot off the proverbial gas pedal of life!

LISA HARPER
Women of Faith speaker and author, Stumbling into Grace

Eileens wit and charm made her feel like an old friend by chapter 3. Whether waiting for Starbucks or chemotherapy, Eileen will add beauty and candor to all of our places of waiting.

JENNIE ALLEN
Author, Stuck

Nobody likes to wait, and most of us get restless in what seem to be stalled periods in our lives. But Eileen Button turns waiting places inside out and shows us how to approach the growth and healing that are present in such times. She teaches us to wait well in this very witty, wise, and fearless memoir.

JENNIFER GRANT
Journalist and author, Love You More

Eileen Button is about to become your new best friend. Sharp, witty, and gut-wrenchingly honest, she dishes about work, love, children, husbands, and the struggle to move forward when youre forced to wait.

KELLY FLYNN
Author, Kids, Classrooms, and Capitol Hill

THE
WAITING
PLACE

Learning
to Appreciate Lifes
Little Delays

EILEEN BUTTON

2011 Eileen Button

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Oh, the Places You ll Go! by Dr. Seuss,TM and by Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. 1990. Used by permission of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

This is Your Life by Jonathan Foreman. 2003 Meadowgreen Music Company (ASCAP) Sugar Pete Songs (ASCAP) (adm. at EMICMGPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Names, characterizations, and details in some of the authors anecdotes and stories have been changed to protect identities.

Some of the essays in this volume originally appeared in the Flint Journal and Christianity Today:Gifted for Leadership and have been edited for inclusion here.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Button, Eileen, 1966
The waiting place: learning to appreciate lifes little delays / Eileen Button.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8499-4625-7 (pbk.)
1. Expectation (Psychology)Religious aspectsChristianity. 2. Waiting (Philosophy) 3. PatienceReligious aspectsChristianity. 4. Providence and government of GodChristianity. 5. Trust in GodChristianity. I. Title. II. Title: Learning to appreciate lifes little delays.
BV4647.E93B88 2011
248.4dc22

2011003724

Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my husband, Brad,
who has waited alongside me
for more than half my life
and never once let go of my hand.

You can get so confused
that youll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...
Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places Youll Go!

CONTENTS

1. THE WAITING PLACE
I am waiting for the day to end. Just end

2. WHISPERING WALLS
I am waiting for a place called home

3. CURLING IRON CHRONICLES
I am waiting for Mom to finish styling my hair

4. LIFTING FOG
I am waiting for the fish to bite

5. FIVE FEET UNDER
I am waiting for Grandpas funeral

6. H-E-A-R-T (EIGHT POINTS)
I am waiting for my gram to spell a word

7. LOVE IS...
I am waiting for a sign

8. LESSONS IN HUMILITY
I am waiting for my dignity to return

9. BREATHE
I am waiting for my baby to cry

10. CROSSING THE JORDAN
I am waiting for a miracle

11. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
I am waiting for the mail

12. REDEEMING THE BVM
I am waiting for my father-in-law to
dispose of Mother Mary

13. SUNDAY, SUNDAY
I am waiting for church to be over

14. STEPPING INTO DARKNESS
I am waiting for my husband to come home

15. REFUGE
I am waiting for my husband to be well

16. DANDELION
I am waiting for my friend to (finally) decide

17. WINDBLOWN TAILS
I am waiting for my children to grow up

18. WIGMOM
I am waiting for my mother to accept me

19. UNCLE TOM
I am waiting for my godfather to take his last breath

20. A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
I am waiting for my (half-dressed)