I am writing this on my iPhone during a flight from Phoenix to Nashville. Travel is mostly waiting--waiting to get to the airport, waiting to check in, to get through security, to get Starbucks, to arrive. It's a practice in patience, which is a rare commodity these days.

I've noticed that most people don't just wait, they multi-task. The Starbucks employees have to interrupt people on phone calls to take their order, and on the plane, most people with laptops are working. Airlines are now offering Wi-Fi so travelers can be at the office even at thirty thousand feet.

I'm just barely old enough to remember life without multi-tasking--life when waiting meant quiet downtime, and a car ride was just a car ride, not an opportunity to get work done. My kids won't ever know a world like that, a world where people are truly present when they are still, not somewhere else via their phone or whatever comes next.

I think many of us want that life, but deep down we're scared of the quiet. We're afraid that if we slow down and get quiet, we'll come out of our skin. That actually might be true, but something’s got to give. This kind of life is out of control.

When Jennifer, Hutch and I moved back to the States from South Africa, we were expecting to hit the ground running. We had come from quiet and were ready for motion. Instead, God gave us more quiet. It wasn't what we wanted, so we constantly asked for direction into what was next and looked for God's will under every rock.

For weeks, months, and eventually years, we heard nothing from God in the way of direction. So we waited, and waited and waited. Eventually, we resigned that God had something for us in the absence of motion. Slowly we began to stop asking Him about the "next" and started to accept His presence in the "now."

We're still not good at waiting, but were doing better.

Waiting is brokenness. It's choosing not to move until prompted. It's choosing not to do something within your power. Like meekness, it is power under restraint. It's trusting God to fill up the space or empty it out, whatever is best. It's faith over fear, stillness over spinning.

Our latest radio single, "What If Your Best," from Wide Open Spaces, is about our experience waiting over the past couple of years and what we have learned--that many times, God's best is in the waiting, in the lack of motion and the absence of noise.

All of us are waiting for something, even if we don't realize it. Sometimes God tells us to go get it, and sometimes He tells us to wait. Either way, we have to be quiet long enough to sense which one is best.

And more than likely, while we are waiting, God will show us something beautiful.