Stuck Here Waiting

A change of plans demanded that I wait for almost 2 hours. I found no coffee shop for miles around.  The choice was to sit in the car with nothing to do or to sit in the car with nothing to do. I made my choice.

Top that off with a device that was steadily losing its charge and one could say that I was completely unprepared.

However, what could have been one of those ‘this-is-taking-forever’ experiences turned into something surprisingly worthwhile. It turned into something spiritual. 

In 1964, the Paul E. Johnston Elementary School was built in Hopkinton, Iowa. It's a pleasant enough single-level structure but if you drove by not knowing the building's purpose, you would certainly guess elementary school.  Even the fact that I never entered the door doesn’t eliminate a closed-eye virtual visit and quickly, I would know everything I needed to know about the interior.

Next door to this school sits an abandoned red brick building. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander around its secrets while waiting dutifully in front of the Johnston Elementary School.

Noticing an arched entrance to the old brick beauty, I assumed various improvements had been made to the 1876 structure. But my parking lot prison allowed time for me to imagine the kids that may have entered the old antique as grade schoolers.  I surmised that the earliest students would no longer be with us, and the latest pupils would be well into their 90s by now.

I wondered if this might have been a public school. I considered the possibility that it may have been private as well.  Were stiff and uncomfortable uniforms worn as children played in the yard under what are now 75-foot trees? Or were the children commuting on two legs from the homes of struggling families? Were these small-town babies appreciating a recess that might be their only moments to grab a childhood before heading home to difficult chores? 

As I thought about what might be true, I took another look at the trees standing so very tall all around the brick building. They were weathered, dark, tangled, and twisted in creepy movie-like positions. Old and ugly, they stood guard in a sinister protective stance around the building. Today the grounds were not so inviting. 

Thoughts reverted to the occupiers of that schoolhouse on School Street in Hopkinton, Iowa. (pronounced "Hopkitten" – can’t get used to that).  Were they old, twisted, and not so inviting now as well? 

I wondered what I should be doing with these impressions of darkness, ugliness, and old-ness.

The question was answered with imagination once more. Decades ago, the property was well-manicured, and the building was new. The dark disappears in favor of the delight of children playing in the sun. 

Picturing things in a different time and space can be calming and hopeful. 

I wonder if that’s why nursing home residents will sometimes prefer the past to the present. I wonder if that’s the reason that my grandfather believed with all his heart that I was a farmer even though I told him repeatedly that I was just renting the house. 

After a while, I forgot about my reality and lived in his – we talked about how well the corn was doing. The visits were always more pleasant this way.

With the blessing of imagination, I can expose possibilities and consider circumstances that have brought people to the present. I can consider hopeful what-ifs. I can contemplate someone's struggles and understand their choices and decisions. 

I can discard the old and the ugly for the new and the lovely.

And in that I-am-a-captive moment, I remembered. God does the same thing for me, every single day.

Stuck here while waiting was transformed into STRUCK here while waiting! 

Instead of a bitter taste caused by an unwelcome extended interval, I was blessed with the time to notice. What I saw around me triggered the imagination which then created stories and impressionable inner experiences – Good ones! Hopeful ones! 

As I moved back into reality, I did a little poking around. My focused storyline around the building planted on the corner of Culver and School Street had never been a school. I'm still confused as to why someone would name this two-block pathway School Street.

My mistaken mental excursions might well have been influenced during the earlier coffee shop search. A few blocks from the elementary school, the Delaware County Historical Society cares for the Lenox College campus. The first buildings opened in 1859. There are now 9, mostly red brick buildings on the site. I found a reference that one of them had been temporarily used as an elementary school for a while.  I guess that my imagination just had the wrong address.

But like my grandfather, I’m going to stick with a false reality. I'm going to think of excited children embracing the joy of life's pleasures under the protection of stately trees ringing a schoolyard playground. I am going to imagine their lives as beautiful and leave the old, ugly, uninteresting darkness behind. 

Imagination is a gift. 

• Would it be so terrible to use imagination to see a future rather than a past? 
• Would it be ridiculous to visualize the answered prayers of hope-filled people who have seen in their hearts what is possible for our world? 
• Would it be insanity to use the mind's eye to see the hope of love and unity that is possible if we follow Jesus?

Perhaps, 'Stuck Here Waiting' is the whole reason for Advent.

And maybe, imagination can be the beginning of the Spirit of Christmas within us.