Risks and Rejection

Here's an excerpt of something I wrote in my journal last week.

6/30/10.-
...We can't get on that plane without our passports. I'm terrified they won't make it back in time. We could change our plane tickets-move them back a day or two -for safety. But that's not trusting God. Thtat's trying to make a Plan B. We need no Plan B because our Plan A is the God of the universe. I feel quite sure that if we start meddling, trying to interfere, we'll just get in the way. The Holy Spirit has told me and shown me how if we leave it up to God, He will take care of it and everything will work out, but if we try to take it upon ourselves, as I'm so tempted to do, we'll still make it over there-but we'll lose those first few days of our honeymoon, needlessly pushing our flight back. We'll lose the joy God has set aside for us if we trust Him completely. I'm tempted to play it safe, but I'm deciding right here and now that we won't, that we will take advantage of every blessing God has for us in this situation. He doesn't teach us to play it safe. He teaches us to be risk takers- like the better fate of the servant who invested and multiplied the master's money, compared to the servant who played it safe by burying the money in the ground and doing nothing with it. I'm deciding right now to trust God. That I won't make a Plan B because He is Plan A and there is blessing and joy and fulfillment in Plan A. I'm going to aim for blessing, not safety. I'm trusting Him not to make me eat these words.

I wrote that just a few hours after I got an email from the visa people in Chicago telling me that they needed our marriage certificate...but we're not married yet, so of course we didn't have one to send them. I sent our marriage license instead, along with a letter explaining our circumstances, hoping that might be sufficient.

I found out today that it wasn't. I got a call today from Chicago letting me know that it was in my best interest to withdraw my application, because otherwise they would reject it, which is somehow worse. So, the first point I'd like to make is, that I was right. God's Plan A was far better than our Plan B. He hasn't let me down. If I had tried to intervene, I would have pushed our plane tickets back a few days. Now, I know that would have been for nothing. Now that my visa has been rejected, they'll go ahead and send my passport back to me now. It will be here well in time for our flight. Chelsea's should go without a hitch as well, and should be here soon. He knew my application would be rejected-He knew I didn't need to change those plane tickets. Now, because I trusted Him completely, (even in the face of the terrifying fact that we might not have our passports in time for our flight, that it might screw up really expensive plane tickets), instead of wasting even more money on changing fees with the airlines, and wasting the first few days of our honeymoon, and wasting the first few days of the cottage that I'd already paid for, we'll get to enjoy all of those things. I will enter the UK as a visitor, with my passport in hand, and we'll get to experience all the joy of those 3 or 4 days, that could have been lost if we hadn't trusted God, if we hadn't took that risk. There was a trial before us. We knew it was a trial, we knew that we could choose to either trust God or try to take care of things ourselves. Praise the Lord, for, this time at least, we have made it through this trial victoriously.


But of course, that's not all there is. Now we're right smack in the middle of a new trial. Yes, part of that trial is figuring out what to do, pratically, with me. I'll go over as a visitor, but then at some point, I'll have to come back to America and reapply for my visa once we have our marriage certificate. So we have to figure out the logistics of that. But that just comes down to money, really. Repaying the insanely expensive visa application fee, buying an extra round trip plane ticket so that I can come back to the States for a month to reapply for my visa. It's just money, and figuring out what we're supposed to do with it. God has blessed us so incredibly and beyond my own comprehension with our financial situation though, that at this point, that sort of trial isn't even that difficult. I'm hyper-aware of the fact that it's all God's money anyway; that if His plan involves us dropping an unexpected thousand bucks along the way, then so be it. I know without a doubt that He will provide that money, and that He will bless us tenfold for trusting all of our financial concerns to Him. For me, right now, that's the easy part.

What's really difficult for me now is responding appropriately to this rejection. I've gotten a lot of rejection in the past year or so.
First, I was rejected by the Honors department at UGA for my applications for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.
Then again for the Fulbright Scholarship.
Then I was rejected by the University of Oxford completely-forget funding, I didn't even get into the school.
Then I started submitting my poems to a number of journals and magazines, which I knew going into it would lead to rejection-acceptance rates are incredibly low-but it was still rejection nonetheless, and quite a lot of it.
Then, I was rejected for quite a few jobs I applied for in June trying to earn some extra cash before the wedding.
And now my visa application has been rejected.

Dealing with rejection is incredibly difficult for me. It's something I've been struggling with my entire life; I've constantly been seeking the approval of man. From how I did in sports, to how I performed in school, to the girl I had a crush on, I wanted people's approval. I wanted people to tell me that I had done a good job. That what I did was worth something, that I made the right decision. Especially with this recent string of rejections, I have felt incredible amounts of embarrassment and shame. That horrible little voice inside my head that says "You're not good enough." That I'm not a good enough student to get scholarships or get into school. That my poems aren't good enough to be published. That my resume isn't good enough to get me a job. Even with this last one, with the visa, that voice still persists, as though it is somehow some character default of my own that we are getting married this month instead of last month. I'm embarrassed to tell people about it. I don't want people to know I've failed.

But those are not righteous thoughts. Those are not from the Lord. Those thoughts are from the enemy, and they can bring no good or edification in my life. So now, much as I saw on June 30th that a trial of faith and trust was before me, I see that there is a trial before me now. God teaches us to find our value, our worth, in Him. To seek His approval, not the approval of man. That I know is the trial before me now, as I deal with this rejection. It is the same trial that has been set before me after each of these rejections this past year. Most of those trials, I failed. I felt despair, depression, anger, resentment, and bitterness-towards those that rejected me, towards God for not preventing that rejection. I've been working on it, and I did better with some of those rejections than others. Now though, right now, just as I chose to trust God on the 30th, now I am choosing to seek only the approval of God. I am choosing to respond to this rejection only as God would have me do. I'm choosing to recognize and remember that we worship the God that chose meek, lowly David, not his older, stronger brothers.

For anyone out there actually trying to keep up with this blog, sorry for this long, heavy post. I don't intend to make this a pattern. Things are kind of crazy and intense right now though, as Chelsea demonstrated in the last post. There's a little pun Chelsea and I and some of our friends like to play around with--intentionally mixing up "intense" with "in tents," so you might say something like, "Whoa, that's intense. Like camping." Maybe it's not as clever as we think it is. All the cool kids do it though, really. Anyway, this long post was really unavoidable because, as Chelsea wrote to me in a text the other day, we're about to enter a three ring circus. I think perhaps we're already in it.