The Waiting Room

By Luke Pennington

On May 1, 2021, at 12:20 a.m., inside a parsonage in Silsbee, Texas, a woman is frantically shaken from her sleep by her husband. He stands at the foot of the bed. Their eyes lock, his mouth struggles to form words. “Jennifer, my face is asleep.” Her instincts, developed over thirty years of work in the medical field, kick in immediately. She walks him through a simple task with a sense of controlled urgency. He holds both arms in front of him. The right one falls less than thirty seconds later. He is showing the symptoms of a stroke. The standard protocol is to call 911, but time is of the essence in this situation, and a quick response with medical attention could prevent permanent brain damage.

A stroke is an unpredictable thing. A little earthquake inside the body, the damage could be far beyond what the surface shows. One could trigger another, like a chain of tremors. And much like an earthquake, the ones that follow are far more severe.

She grabs her husband by the arm and hurries through the door, still putting her shoes on all the while. Their car tears out of the driveway. Fortunately, this small town fell asleep before midnight and the roads were clear, so before the clock struck 1:00, pastor Keith Pennington stumbled into the Emergency Room with the help of his wife. He was whisked away to a back room. She had done all she could do. Now the only thing left was to pray under the cold fluorescent lights of the waiting room.

256 miles away, in Waxahachie, I was packing my bags to leave college. May 1^st marked the end of my Junior year, and I had an inexplicable urge to start packing at 1 am. I was folding a pair of jeans, and I felt the familiar buzz of my phone on my thigh. It was a member of my dad’s congregation, a family friend who had coached me in high school. I wondered why he was calling so late and I felt a strange sensation in my stomach before I even answered. The same way animals have been known to act strangely weeks before an earthquake. I don’t remember his exact words; I just remember the way the streetlamps looked outside my window when I learned my dad was in the ER. I had no idea why he was there, and no way of knowing what condition he was in. I felt powerless.

So I promptly called my mother, who didn’t answer with words, but with audible sobbing. “I’m in the E.R., Dad had a stroke and they’re transporting him to Houston.” That didn’t sit well with me. Being taken to a bigger hospital with better equipment usually meant there was something very wrong.

But now there was just the four-hour drive to Houston ahead of me. As I drove, I looked back and remembered helping my dad clean the church once. I was seven, and I was his little helper, picking up tissues and wrappers under the pews. I asked why we had to do it. We were the pastors after all! He said, “Never think that you’re too good for a job that needs doing. We’re supposed to set the example and serve others.” That’s the kind of man he is. And that’s the kind of man I wanted to be. All sorts of moments like this went through my head and I wondered if there would be any more in our uncertain future.

Four hours later, my sister, Kaley, answered her door. It was a bittersweet sibling reunion. Seeing my exhaustion, she offered her couch for me to sleep on while Janna, the oldest, was on a flight that would land in several hours.

We received minimal updates from Mom. Due to hospital safety protocol, only one visitor was allowed every 24 hours. We would let her have those for the next couple days. Still no update on Dad, which was agonizing.

We had all done what we could. The rest was out of our control, so we waited. And then Janna reminded us of something that had managed to elude us in the chaos. Today was Dad’s birthday. We laughed. We laughed hard— at the irony and at the embarrassment of forgetting. It seemed like the appropriate response. All the while, we understood that there was something we could do. We could show appreciation for life, which isn’t guaranteed. We spent the rest of the day buying balloons, cake, and a card. And as we were leaving the shop, I noticed a small succulent which I bought because it reminded me of life. I wanted him to see it and to remember that, too. It was like an act of faith for a healing that we didn’t know would happen or not.

The next day, we received the news we had been waiting for. Dad would be leaving the hospital that day, a miracle by all accounts. Perhaps due to Mom’s quick thinking, he had been treated in time to minimize damage, and although there would be residual effects, he was very much going to be the man we knew. We honestly would have accepted worse news just as readily, as long as this burden of waiting for the unknown was removed. But now, we waited for a different reason. As he walked through the door of the house that evening, he was greeted with a quiet but grand celebration. During this, a thought occurred to me. Much of our lives are spent waiting on things beyond our control. If a person doesn’t take account of what they can do instead of worrying about what they can’t change, they could spend their entire life waiting for it to be lived. All we can hope to do is hand it to God, seize control of what lies within our reach and have confidence God will make something of our waiting.