Hey everyone I have a solution!  I know it's a bit of a pain, but it's not too bad, if you'll factory reset your smartwatch and let Verizon Messages install itself on the newly reset watch message notifications are INSTANT!

Man, I'm so excited.  Messages is such a terrific app with its ability to use the web to send/receive messages or the desktop app, to have this as the limiting factor was really troublesome.  I'm so happy I found a solution.  Hopefully that works for everyone else here and that helps Verizon's programmers figure out what was wrong and work to a solution so people don't have to reset their smartwatches in the future.