Patience takes faith

Okay, well, I've been here long enough to have acclimatized and to start focusing on things that aren't related to figuring out how things work and what to do and when. :) So, for a little thinking in retrospect...

We've all heard and/or said "patience takes faith" sooo many times -- too many. But have you ever actually experienced it?

When I was praying about what I should do and whether or not I should go to Houston to try for a better visa option, the Lord told me that it would be good both for my visa situation and for me personally.

We all know how the visa went. The "personally" part was the unclear factor.

Well, before arriving in Houston, I started thinking -- since I am prone to analyze all the wrong things too much and the necessary things not at all -- that it would probably actually be helpful for me, emotionally, to have a complete break from my previous situation that didn't mean arriving directly in my new situation.--And that maybe that's what He meant.

Now, if you're not an emotional person and/or you don't analyze (some of) your emotions as much as I (really-shouldn't-be-doing) do, you won't get this. But, anyway, things ended up going something like this, on the emotional plane...

- It was very difficult for me to leave my former situation. I only did it because the Lord told me to. Ordinarily, I would not have had the strength of spirit to decide to do such a thing on my own. He said I should, so I believed I should and I did it. It didn't dawn on me until... Well, I think it really hasn't dawned on me quite yet, although I do get glimmers of dawn and dawning, now and now and then.

- In any new, unfamiliar or non-routine situation, I'm disoriented and I have to stop and get my bearings before I can proceed and/or make any useful decisions (this tactic is something I only discovered in the last 6 months, haha). When I arrived in Houston, I (surprisingly) quickly got my bearings, everything I needed to do fell right into place, there were no major setbacks and life went by quite easily.

- I've been in Taiwan about a month-and-a-half and I feel like I've been here a year, as far as getting my bearings, getting into the run of things and clicking with some people goes. That's never happened so easily and quickly with me before. I know there will be trials about the change and there already have been -- they've been threatening to surface more and more these days, but we're not focusing on that and we're plowing ahead with focusing on everything that needs to be done, here.--And lots of new experiences! :)

Okay, so, where the faith comes into this whole experience...

Well, as much as I'm not a person of faith, the only explanation for having left my last situation was that, by faith, I had to do what the Lord said. Okay, that's all good and well, but what was this "personal" goodness from being in Houston, that I couldn't at all predict?

You know, something about having that two-week break between the old and the completely new re-set my bearings in a way I've never experienced before. I don't think it would work that way every time, so it's not like a set formula I can repeat and expect to work, but the Lord said it would do something for me personally, that time, and it did!

I was so focused on what needed to be done in Houston, that I couldn't focus on myself and my battles. Spending two weeks being away from home, and yet not focusing on my trials as I would've had I arrived directly here, enabled me to make the move here without all those initial trials that would've destabilized me and rocked my resolve.

In fact, I was so ready to get here and out of the temporary situation -- not because of the people or situation itself, but because "in limbo" and "temporary" are not my favorite words -- that the prospect of getting to Taiwan -- getting to the room that would be mine, the bed that wouldn't change from one night to the next, the more-predictable schedule, etc. -- couldn't happen quickly enough. I wanted it! I looked forward to it!

That, my friends, is a very different attitude from the one I would've had going directly from Home A to Home B. Believe you me. I'm sure I could've grinned and borne it, had I had to do so, but this was, in my opinion, a small (huge, really!) blessing for having made the decision to obey: for an emotional person like me, receiving a present that leaves you feeling stable and even-keeled is one of the best things that one could receive!

So, what does this tell us? It tells us that not only does God have great wisdom in how He plans things, but when He says "x will be x", it will be, if we believe and obey (which reminds me of billions of other quotes).

Okay, all that takes believing, trusting and faith, but that wasn't the half of it... well, I think that was the half of it... the half of that, at least.

The other half...

Somewhere into the first week of my stay in Houston, I reeeally started wanting to get out of that situation -- again, not for the people or Home, but for the need and desire to sink my teeth back into work, a normal routine, my new Home, etc. Ordinarily, this would have driven me insane and my impatience would have been a perfect cause for trial.

But when the Lord tells you that two weeks in Houston is good, two weeks in Houston will get you the visa you're after, two weeks in Houston will make you happy, you believe Him, right? Well, something was not normal, because for one, never before had believing and trusting come so easily, for two, when I realized that I just had to believe and trust, I decided to believe and trust and I did believe and trust.

My good people, I am not a logical person when it comes to my feelings and emotions. I am not run by logic or what my mind tells me is right and "the Word said it's so, so it is so". Not for lack of trying, but for lack of basic structural integrity. So deciding that I was going to believe and trust and that it would actually work for me was not a foregone conclusion. But the long of it is, as you can see: I believed, I trusted, it worked.

Will this be repeated every time with the same formula? I think not. Not because believing and trusting doesn't equal this kind of result, but I think that, besides my own wicked nature, the Lord also uses specific times and instances to bring about specific things, so He just might not make it that easy, next time and/or He chose to make it that easy that one time for the specific reasons and results He had planned.

Well, as God wills it, so may it be, in the future.

Some recent prophecy excerpts have said that some of the things we had to go through last year will carry over and be not-needing-repeating things... I had also gotten very similar statements in my personal prophecies, when asking the Lord a lot of "whys" and generally not understanding a lot of what happened to me in the previous year.

So, my mind tells me this is the new way, that the future will have plenty more of this, because if it's happened once, it can happen again.--And because the Word says things will be different. :) My emotions tell me I really know better and not to expect too much of myself or circumstances. Haha. Well, we shall see what life does bring...

In any case, I needed patience for that wait and that patience came through faith, just like that quote always said it would!

(You may scoff at my being impatient for such a short amount of time, but if you understand how things affect such an one, or how they were affecting me at the time, because of the tried-to-explain-above circumstances, you will understand how significantly significant that really was.)