Waiting

Waiting is hard. It doesn't really matter what one is waiting for. One could simply be waiting for a letter, waiting for a friend who is late, waiting for the answer to an important question, waiting for a someone to apologize for hurting you. Waiting is hard.
I have been thinking lately about how God keeps us waiting. Allow me to explain, I have two friends, both incredibly active women, the kind of woman who makes everyone around her feel lazy just by being herself. About two years ago one of these women took ill, she was constantly tired, constantly sick and unable to do the vast majority of what she had previously accomplished. About a year ago the other woman came down with something similar. I have been spending some time with one of these women lately, we will call her Patty (not her real name), talking about how God keeps us waiting.
Please understand that our conversations have not been about the fact that God keeps us waiting, though that has certainly been a prevalent theme, but the methods he uses to keep us waiting. God stopped both of these women dead in their tracks, literally unable to do much of what they had been doing, waiting for God to let them go again. For myself and a few others the purpose has been the same, but the method quite different, I have not been sick, simply unable to take the next step. It seems, for the past couple of years, that whatever I try the answer is no. I am reminded of one of Paul's missionary journeys, Paul tried to go to several different geographic areas simply to have God turn him back. When Paul when to the wrong place God did not say "No, I want you to go here." God simply said, "No, try again." Paul spent time, probably months, traveling from city to city only to have God say, "No Paul, try again" each time. Finally Paul went to a port city, pretty much the last place he had left to try, and this is when God gave him a vision of a man from Macedonia begging Paul to come preach to them.
I often wonder what the purpose of this was, scripture never tells us why God did this, simply that he did. Similarly I wonder what the purpose of my friend Patty's illness is, and what the purpose of my current position is. I know that God has a purpose, this is never in doubt. I know that he is teaching her, and teaching me, preparing us for something. Ultimately I'm not sure I need to know what that something is, I suppose I'll probably find out someday, but at the same time I wonder if I have the capability of saying "I don't need to know." I want to know you see, it's in my nature, I want to understand, and maybe that is the lesson, that no matter how much I want to understand; I can't. I can't understand everything and sometimes I just have to trust that God does know what he is doing, even when I don't.
I wish I could say that I understood the lesson, that I have something valuable to teach anyone who reads this post, but the truth is that I'm not there yet. I trust God, I trust him enough to wait, even though I have no idea why I'm waiting.