The Hold Music I've Now Memorized
The Hold Music I've Now Memorized
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 19, 2026
I have been on hold with our insurance company so many times this month that I recognize the hold music by the second bar, a tinny saxophone loop that repeats every ninety seconds, and I have started to dread it the way I used to dread other things I could not control. A billing code got entered wrong after my son's visit to urgent care in July, and every call to fix it ends the same way, a polite voice telling me the request has been escalated, a promise that someone will call back within five to seven business days that never quite arrives. I have spent what feels like entire afternoons of my life this month holding a phone to my ear, tapping my foot, refreshing an online portal that never updates, watching the little bar spin.
What has surprised me is not the frustration itself, which I expected, but how much it has exposed about how little patience I actually have when nothing about the outcome depends on my effort. I can work hard for something. I have proven that in recovery, showing up to meetings on nights I did not want to, doing the next right thing on repeat until it became a life instead of a performance. But waiting is a different discipline entirely, because there is nothing to do with my hands while I wait, no task to throw myself into that will make the hold music end any sooner. All that is left is the waiting itself, and I have discovered I am not nearly as sanctified as I thought I was until a customer service queue proved otherwise.
Solomon noticed something about impatience that I did not expect to find comforting, but did. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (Ecclesiastes 7:8, NKJV). I had always filed impatience under minor annoyances, the kind of thing that irritates but does not really matter. Solomon puts it next to pride instead, and the longer I sit with that pairing the more accurate it feels. My impatience on that call is rarely really about the wait. It is about my conviction that things should move at the pace I have decided is reasonable, which is a quieter version of believing I should be the one in charge of the clock.
James writes about a kind of patience that gets produced rather than performed, and the order of his sentence matters. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2-4, NKJV). Produces, not manufactures on command. I cannot grit my teeth hard enough to generate patience the way I can grit my teeth hard enough to finish a hard workout. It has to be grown in me through the very trial I keep wanting removed, which means the hold music itself, as small a trial as it is, might be doing work in me that a quick resolution never would.
Jeremiah, writing from inside a grief far heavier than a billing dispute, lands on something I keep needing to hear again. "The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). Quietly is the word I resist most. My waiting has not been quiet. It has been foot-tapping, jaw-clenching, rehearsing my complaint to whichever representative answers next. Quiet waiting sounds almost passive until I realize it is actually a form of trust, a soul that has stopped needing to narrate its own impatience out loud because it already believes Someone is handling the account.
Paul ties waiting to hope in a way that reframes the whole posture for me. "But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance" (Romans 8:25, NKJV). Eagerly is not the word I would have chosen for how I feel about that phone queue, but eagerly does not mean cheerful about the mechanics. It means the waiting itself is aimed at something real, not empty time to be endured, which is different from the dead, looping feeling the hold music gives me.
Isaiah promises something stranger still, that the waiting is not merely tolerated but is where strength actually gets renewed. "But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31, NKJV). I keep picturing renewal as what happens after the wait ends. Isaiah puts it inside the waiting itself, strength arriving in the very place I assumed only depletion could live.
Here is where my own effort runs out of road entirely. I can decide to be less irritable on the phone. I can rehearse patience as a technique. But actual patience, the kind that does not privately seethe while sounding calm, is not a technique at all. Paul names it as something grown, not gritted. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Longsuffering is fruit, which means it comes from abiding in the vine, not from willing myself into a better mood before the next call connects. Human reasoning can talk me into tolerating the wait. Only the Spirit can give me the peace that does not need the wait to end first.
I called again this afternoon, and the hold music started right on cue, and for the first time this month I did not spend those ninety seconds composing my complaint. I just breathed, and let the Spirit hold what my patience alone could not. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which call you are still waiting on. He has a plan that is not running behind schedule even when the portal says it is, and He will never leave you on hold by yourself.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:8; James 1:2-4; Lamentations 3:25-26; Romans 8:25; Isaiah 40:31; Galatians 5:22-23.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 19, 2026
I have been on hold with our insurance company so many times this month that I recognize the hold music by the second bar, a tinny saxophone loop that repeats every ninety seconds, and I have started to dread it the way I used to dread other things I could not control. A billing code got entered wrong after my son's visit to urgent care in July, and every call to fix it ends the same way, a polite voice telling me the request has been escalated, a promise that someone will call back within five to seven business days that never quite arrives. I have spent what feels like entire afternoons of my life this month holding a phone to my ear, tapping my foot, refreshing an online portal that never updates, watching the little bar spin.
What has surprised me is not the frustration itself, which I expected, but how much it has exposed about how little patience I actually have when nothing about the outcome depends on my effort. I can work hard for something. I have proven that in recovery, showing up to meetings on nights I did not want to, doing the next right thing on repeat until it became a life instead of a performance. But waiting is a different discipline entirely, because there is nothing to do with my hands while I wait, no task to throw myself into that will make the hold music end any sooner. All that is left is the waiting itself, and I have discovered I am not nearly as sanctified as I thought I was until a customer service queue proved otherwise.
Solomon noticed something about impatience that I did not expect to find comforting, but did. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (Ecclesiastes 7:8, NKJV). I had always filed impatience under minor annoyances, the kind of thing that irritates but does not really matter. Solomon puts it next to pride instead, and the longer I sit with that pairing the more accurate it feels. My impatience on that call is rarely really about the wait. It is about my conviction that things should move at the pace I have decided is reasonable, which is a quieter version of believing I should be the one in charge of the clock.
James writes about a kind of patience that gets produced rather than performed, and the order of his sentence matters. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2-4, NKJV). Produces, not manufactures on command. I cannot grit my teeth hard enough to generate patience the way I can grit my teeth hard enough to finish a hard workout. It has to be grown in me through the very trial I keep wanting removed, which means the hold music itself, as small a trial as it is, might be doing work in me that a quick resolution never would.
Jeremiah, writing from inside a grief far heavier than a billing dispute, lands on something I keep needing to hear again. "The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). Quietly is the word I resist most. My waiting has not been quiet. It has been foot-tapping, jaw-clenching, rehearsing my complaint to whichever representative answers next. Quiet waiting sounds almost passive until I realize it is actually a form of trust, a soul that has stopped needing to narrate its own impatience out loud because it already believes Someone is handling the account.
Paul ties waiting to hope in a way that reframes the whole posture for me. "But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance" (Romans 8:25, NKJV). Eagerly is not the word I would have chosen for how I feel about that phone queue, but eagerly does not mean cheerful about the mechanics. It means the waiting itself is aimed at something real, not empty time to be endured, which is different from the dead, looping feeling the hold music gives me.
Isaiah promises something stranger still, that the waiting is not merely tolerated but is where strength actually gets renewed. "But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31, NKJV). I keep picturing renewal as what happens after the wait ends. Isaiah puts it inside the waiting itself, strength arriving in the very place I assumed only depletion could live.
Here is where my own effort runs out of road entirely. I can decide to be less irritable on the phone. I can rehearse patience as a technique. But actual patience, the kind that does not privately seethe while sounding calm, is not a technique at all. Paul names it as something grown, not gritted. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Longsuffering is fruit, which means it comes from abiding in the vine, not from willing myself into a better mood before the next call connects. Human reasoning can talk me into tolerating the wait. Only the Spirit can give me the peace that does not need the wait to end first.
I called again this afternoon, and the hold music started right on cue, and for the first time this month I did not spend those ninety seconds composing my complaint. I just breathed, and let the Spirit hold what my patience alone could not. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which call you are still waiting on. He has a plan that is not running behind schedule even when the portal says it is, and He will never leave you on hold by yourself.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:8; James 1:2-4; Lamentations 3:25-26; Romans 8:25; Isaiah 40:31; Galatians 5:22-23.
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