Kid Pick-Up Line
Don’t confuse the title with kid pickup lines. When I asked our 10 year old what his best pickup line would be if he liked a girl, he said, I’ll never like a girl! With lots of emotion. It doesn’t hurt my feelings that girls are still yucky to him.
No, I’m talking about the lines we parents wait in after school—sometimes at multiple schools—to pick up our kids.
Every day of the week, I wait in the elementary school line. Then a couple hours later I go to the ball fields where thankfully my track kid and my soccer kid practice at the same place.
And I wait.
In my previous life, the one where we were running and gunning, going from thing to thing, waiting in the kid pick up line was the bane of my existence.
I had too many places to be, too many things on my to do list, too many directions I was being pulled in. And it felt like I was trapped in a claustrophobic car nightmare—cars stretched as far as I could see ahead of me and behind me.
But now that I am in a different season, one where I don’t mind waiting because we live a much more slowed down life, I don’t mind the car lines so much.
I now bring things to do. Why, right before I wrote this blog post I painted my toenails in the car pick up line. And I am writing this blog post in the same car pick up line!
Sometimes I film quick social media videos, sometimes I listen to sermons, sometimes I just sit and enjoy the peace and quiet in my car, thinking sentence after sentence all the way to their endings.
The car pick-up line is now my daily mini-vacation.
For too long, I was looking at waiting the wrong way. Now, I am trying to look through my lens of gratitude instead of hustle and bustle. I prepare for my waiting by bringing and keeping things in the car for me to do while I wait.
Guess how many library books I’ve already read—I’m at seven, and you can’t tell me that the pick-up line hasn’t been instrumental in this. I also have a little embroidery to work on when I’m feeling old-school and I am managing to write on this blog Monday through Friday, thanks in part to the car pick-up line.
In this world, in seems we are always waiting—waiting for circumstances to change, waiting for kids to get out of hard phases, waiting for relationships to change—when we figure out how to not just tolerate the wait, but prepare for and enjoy the wait, life gets a little sweeter.
In every phase, we have a good possibility of being subjected to some kind of wait. Seems to me it would be a good idea not just to be content in the wait, but also work on things in the wait.
That may just be the definition of waiting well.
What are you waiting on today? Let me know, I’d love to pray for you!
Much love,
Meredith