Script execution finishes before layout actually displays?

I am running into a curious problem.  I have a navigation wrapper script that essentially goes to a layout and displays a particular found set.  There are a few scripts involved:

   Wrapper (sets some defaults)   ->  Filter (refines records to display) -> Sort

I am putting some variables in the script to show me the overall time it takes for this layout to load for the end user (i.e. for it to display the data).  I use "Get(UTCMsecs)" at various points to record how long certain steps take in addition to the overall time.  I then have a dialog show me all these variables at the end of the script.

Putting the "start" and "end" timer-readings around just the call to the Filter script, my final dialog pops up BEFORE the resulting layout is visible and tells me "3 seconds" (for example).  But then I hit OK and it takes another 15 seconds for the actual data to be transferred and the layout to draw on the screen.  This is not what I want; I want to know how long it is taking for all this data to load and draw for the end user. 

I have found that if I stick a "Refresh window" in the script before I mark the timer end-point, then it actually does draw the whole layout before showing me the data.  But, I am not really sure how much additional time the Refresh is adding to the process.  And the larger question, why doesn't the layout draw before my script ends?  Anyone have knowledge of what these layers are doing?

Thanks,

C