Faith, Passports, and Knowing When to Quit

"Faith is not believing that God CAN. It is knowing that He WILL." This seemingly harmless statement is currently my friend's Facebook status. Under most circumstances one would not find it particularly controversial or provocative, but this week, it struck a bit of nerve. Let's start from the beginning...

On September 10th, I started the Two-Year-Visa-Fun (as it's officially titled) by waiting for an hour or two to find out that I did not have all of the papers they wanted. This began the process that would take about twelve days and exactly 17,000 trips to the immigration office until on the 22nd they were finally satisfied with my documents and accepted them, telling me to return in two weeks to pick up my Passport. (This sign hangs in the immigration office, in English it reads: "The best way to do things is with Love!" In a government office!)

I generously gave them an extra week and returned on the 12th of October with every confidence that my visa would be waiting for me. However, instead they matter-of-factly told me my papers had just arrived in La Paz (I live in Santa Cruz) and I should return in another two weeks. That's when the panic slowly started to arise, only to crescendo this afternoon as my body tried to decide whether to vomit or faint while waiting in the immigration office for the second time today. You see, the urgency that struck me over the head like a ton of bricks was my trip to Peru in LESS than two weeks, for which of course, I would NEED my passport!

This was no sight-seeing trip to Peru either. My veterinary license renewal period has come and gone, without any grace from the board toward my living-in-a-distant-land situation, and now if I don't get 26 more hours of continuing education before November 30th my license will be terminated. So, this launched phase two of the passport retrieval madness, in which I flew to La Paz to speed the process, returned empty-handed, read two more books while waiting, cried in various government offices, had my car broken into, cried a bit in my own office apparently concerning co-workers as far as Seattle with my uncharacteristic emotional-ness enough to send a "Giant HUG!" cyberly to my rescue, was handed the passport of another US citizen by the name of Lauren (which was so ridiculous that in spite of the tension I couldn't help but laugh), and finally ended up in hundreds of your prayers. I cannot imagine there has been, or will be, a passport as prayed for as this one. Thank you!

In this last step I learned which of you believe the sentiment of the quote at the beginning of this post and which of you have tried it and been let down. Many of you calmly told me to "Just have faith." Others recognized it would be an utter miracle for me to get on that plane as each day passed and they assured me my passport would arrive the next day, and hence rationally tried to come up with alternative solutions. And finally, the third group of you stated out loud what was less reassuring than the "Just have faith" slogan; that maybe God didn't want me to go to Peru.

And from these ideas I have been trying to learn the lesson God's teaching me through this, to ensure that I'll never have to learn it again! My extremely timely devotional yesterday ended with the line "Nuestro futuro desconocido está seguro en las manos de Dios que todo lo conoce." (Our unknown future is safe in God's hands who knows it all.) And this I wholeheartedly believe, but what to do with this thought, I have no idea. If God really is in control, if His plan is greater than our plan, when do we take matters into our own hands and when do we leave them in His? When should I have accepted that God did not want me to have my passport, make this trip, or be a veterinarian anymore?

Well, either it was already in God's plan, but he wanted to make me sweat until the last second, or we were really persuasive with our prayers, but as you've deduced from the photo, this afternoon they finally returned my passport, two-year-visa and all!

I'm still not sure when to throw in the towel and accept that God doesn't want me to do something, and when to faithfully believe He'll give me whatever I ask, but I do know that a lot of you, and a lot of curious onlookers at immigration, just saw an answer to prayer! ¡Peru, nos vemos el domingo!