Wait.

End of May 2015, I packed a van full of cardboard boxes and suitcases and drove to New York City to begin a daring venture of interning at Times Square Church for a year.

Earlier that spring, while still a student at bible school, seniors were offered internship positions that spanned from Canada to Israel covering dozens of places in between, as post graduation considerations. Since kindergarten, I can remember telling people that I was going to be an intern at TSC (Times Square Church) one day. The senior pastor was a close family friend and he set the big idea in me during my first visit to NYC at age five.  The busyness and thrill of it all set the age old dream in my little heart of leaving the small town to move to this monumental city.

I held this dream always in my mental records so when internship application time rolled around circa spring 2015, I did a triple check with God to get the ok, and then applied to work in whatever department of the massive Broadway Theater turned church, that I could obtain. One God-driven interview later, I was offered a position that wasn’t even available to perspective interns initially but was tailored made for me during my conference with the head of the program. It was one of those moments that you walk away from with bursting excitement but held breath as to not change a thing because it was too good to be real.

Graduation passed, I went onto a celebratory family vacation in Florida, trekked back to Canada to be in a friend’s wedding, then packed up and moved into a dormitory in Astoria, Queens...all in 32 days. I could go into detail about the four hours of tears, when my boyfriend had to leave me on my own in my dark new room shared with two strangers, or the next day when I thought I might die on the train but that would deter from the point of this post so I’ll try to speed things up and get to that.

I worked in the church offices, split between the missions department and their FeedNewYork department, both of which I adored. The city became less glamorous day by day and I craved to sit in real grass but the internship itself was fabulous. Then exactly 30 days into it, right when I started falling into routine, I was told that I, and all other international graduates interning elsewhere in the US, were no longer allowed in the country and had a due date of two weeks to make our way to our respective home lands.

There had been a fault, not on our part, in our visa applications. We all tried to appeal it, made our cases but they were denied and deportation was imminent. I left the country on June 29 with no clue as to when I could return. But seeing that I was madly in love with an American citizen, at any cost, I was going to get back in; I just didn’t know how hard it would be to do that.

Two weeks ago, March 2018, marked three years of dealing with immigration and the US government. Three years, thousands of wasted dollars and not one visa to show for it yet. To break down all the details, I individually appealed the faulty visa application upon returning to Canada, it was denied; I was then engaged so we applied for a fiancé visa and was guaranteed it would be through before our set wedding date but with two weeks to the day, it was still far in the distance. We then cancelled that option, entered the country on a tourist visit, got married, and applied for a marriage “change of status” visa.

We will have been married two years this coming summer and I still have yet to hold a visa to my name. The upside is that I obviously am legally allowed to be in the country now but it still comes with a lot of waiting; waiting to be able to work, drive, have an SSN so that I count as a human being in this country, share my husband’s name etc, etc. The entire 3 year process has been one big wait.

I should state here that patience is definitely my least budding fruit of the spirit and as explained in other entries, trust is not my strong suit so God had His work cut out for Him when I reached this portion of my story. Whenever I am in a waiting phase, God has to talk really loudly because most of the time I’m too preoccupied celebrating my own pity to notice anything otherwise, but in the moments when I actually listen, He speak so obviously.

Do you have a “wait” that you’re facing right now? This visa, along with other prominent life issues that sting a little more with each uneventful day, have brought me to the realization that God likes to write “Wait” and “Not yet” into my story and I must say, I am not a fan. I am no expert on waiting but I know for a fact that I have gathered priceless aspects of God’s heart that I might not have had I stayed where I was.

During these seasons, I’ve learned that people on the outside may see waiting as punishment, failure, unproductive or lazy and we can easily fall prey to believe that too. But when the waiting is God ordained, it is the exact opposite. From God’s view, waiting is the perfect plan. When God asks you to wait, it is because that is the absolute best thing for you to do. There is the roll-your-eyes, Christianeeze phrase that says, “Waiting time isn’t wasted time”, but it holds so much truth. Waiting times open up a door to pour yourself into learning all that you can before the results are placed in your ready hands. Waiting, when done responsibly, leads you closer to God’s heart, inscribes irreversible trust in your soul and opens your sight to things that otherwise would be missed.

Though I can say all this, I am a pro at forgetting it. Most of the time waiting feels so dangerous to me. I see statuses, updates and pictures from fellow bible college graduates; I hear stories and testimonies from a myriad of people with blessings galore and full lives and it stirs a panic in me. Waiting and watching the successful points of other’s stories makes my own story feel dangerously useless, quickly inviting comparing and angry confusion directed at God into my thoughts.

On one of these particularly angry confusion days, I wasn’t even trying to hear from God. I was perfectly content to feud in my pjs all day, so I was surprised to find my heart poked by His loving finger while aimlessly scrolling on Instagram. On this day, someone I follow was facing a similar bought of frustration and through her exposed sensitivity and God given words, it gave me a reminder I now cling to regularly, “Seeing it happen for someone else isn’t taking anything away from you.”

How often do we let jealousy rise in us, especially while we wait impatiently, when someone else gets that thing that we keep straining for? It is our first natural humanness reaction but it is so misguided. I’ve seen several people fly through their immigration process in only months and jealousy is my initial go-to but their successful visas aren’t prohibiting me from getting mine- God has me in my situation because it is part of my story; it is molded specifically to my needs and my design.

There is a resounding question that God poses to me each time I let myself get too carried away with annoyances and relaying my version on how things should be: “Will you trust me now? Will you dare to believe me still?” Whenever my already thin patience starts splitting, I hear this question again and it makes my heart stand up a little straighter, mustering all my battered faith to answer with, “I will.”

The month before I graduated college, during one of our final chapels, I felt led to write but had no specific words. I took out a scrap paper and just prayed. God started filling my pen with words straight from His heart to mine that I know were His personal letter to me, meant to be read when swamping doubts in uncertain times threaten to take me under. I share this here, vulnerably, as a reminder to your heart when the same doubt comes for you.

“___(Name)___,  will you give yourself away to me? Will you give me your everything, your anything?  I have so many plans for you but will you give yourself to me first, will you let me be your first? Will you lay aside every worry and fear and accept that nothing can override my plans? I will keep you. Will you wholeheartedly accept every step of this adventure I’m laying ahead of you? Though many days will seem dangerous, tiring, contradictory and even useless, will you take my hand and keep walking with me? I promise I won’t hurt you, you can hold to that. I will lead each step you take and though you may doubt my sense of direction at times, I know what I am doing and I promise that it will be beyond your farthest dreams. Seek me first. I will cover everything else, but please seek me first; I am worth it. You are worth everything to me. I will not let any fall or failure you have change that; my love for you will stand and it will cause you to stand. I am willing and excited to take you on this adventure because I can see all I have for you, in my timing; every blessing and plan I’m going to give to you. I promise you, it will be truly amazing. So will you trust me now? Will you dare to believe me always?”

When God asks you to wait, for whatever length of time with whatever conditions it involves, will you dare to believe Him through it all? Maybe you’ve been waiting for something for so much longer, more pressing than my examples, maybe you’re waiting on something smaller but just as massively real; whatever it be, in this trial period of patience and trust, let’s try to hold to joyful hope as we sit tight in expectation. We can hold to the truth that waiting is the perfect plan.

Short verses in the Bible are my favorite because they’re the easiest to remember and I think Romans 12:12 is one of the best, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” However, sometimes in translation it can lose some of the punch. Word for word, in the original Greek, it reads like this:

“Be joyful that the thing hoped for can be expected, bear bravely and calmly, pressing on in perseverance and show one’s self courageously committed to prayer.”

Let’s do that.