Birthdays and Brain Freezes

6 days from now i will be departing for YAV Orientation in New York and hopefully departing from the U.S. on August 29th! Time is moving so quickly...and i'll get back to why i said "hopefully" in a minute.

Yesterday was also my Mom's birthday! We saw The Help and spent a full day together as a family. It was, without fault to my mother or family, juxtaposed with moments of absolute and utter frustration.

I got off of the phone from Travisa Outsourcing in Houston, TX early yesterday morning. They are the third party company through which I have been trying to receive my Indian Visa since July 15th. They are the primary company dealing with Texas Visas. I speak to a new person almost every time i call even if I ask for a speficic representative. They will simply ask the question, " Why? we all have the same system." Well yes lady in the visa office, you do all have the same system, but you all seem to not be reading my file. Last week i found that my application was rejected for the second time from the Houston consulate. They wanted a more official admission letter to my school, CMS College in Kottayam. Shannon and Thomas John made that happen quickly and by Friday, a revised letter was on the consulate's desk at 12:01. Sadly, the Houston consulate rejected my application for the third time....now we are on to Plan B.

Plan B
Today I start the 3 day process of withdrawing my application from Houston, and place it in the already more trusted hands of Visas to go to get an expedited visa. By my calculations, this should put me about a week off of my intended departure date. This is not what I wanted, but my morning devotional today reminded me that things do not always turn out the way we have intended.

In Sarah Young's book of devotionals Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence, the short, paragraph long devotionals are more like conversations, spoken directly to the reader in first person. It is written as if Jesus is speaking right in to my days, and today the book had plenty to say about my struggles. It reads:

Accept each day as it comes to you, do not waste your time and energy wishing for a different set of circumstances. Instead, trust me enough to yield to my design and purposes. Remember that nothing can separate you from my loving presence. YOU are mine.

Thanks God for seeing right through me again. Today I have much more drive to complete this task knowing that it is simply a part of my journey.
"To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know." The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver