Yesterday Bad, Today Good

Yesterday really, really sucked. I mean the colossal kinda suck. Like somewhere between your peppercorn steak being consumed by the neighbor's evil dog, and your new laptop being run over by an unnecessarily large SUV. Ok, so I've had a bit of Coke today, and I'm currently suffering from the shakes and some sort of dementia.

Yesterday, poor Bethany awoke to the sound of her mild mannered husband gesticulating wildly and cursing bureaucrats of all stripes. I had just received an email from my contact at the Canadian embassy in Manila, and the news was not good. She was telling me not expect a passport for Promise until July. This was in stark contrast to the information she supplied me with two months ago.

I tried for hours to reach somebody, anybody at the embassy. Each phone call ended with my anger level climbing to new heights, as I sat listening to that incessant ringing that would later haunt my dreams. I then discovered that I was being charged a ridiculous amount of money for each unsuccessful phone call. Awesome. Ironically, it was an American friend of mine who later reminded me that it was Victoria Day in Canada, and thus the embassy would be closed. Super.

Once I understood that the embassy was closed I calmed down a bit, but the damage was done. I wanted a mulligan. I wanted to undo my expletive riddled wake up call that had left me feeling guilty and ashamed. I wanted to get up on the other side of the bed (figuratively, not literally—Bethany's side of the bed lacks the charm and nuance that comes with laundry and old receipts strewn haphazardly upon the floor).

I moped for much of the day, feeling sorry for myself and wondering if I had screwed up the entire citizenship/passport process somehow. I have since determined that I played my hand as best I could, I just had lousy cards. I worked late because productivity makes me feel good and was my drug of choice.

Today didn't suck. I feel pretty good about today. I had Coke, so that kinda skews the suck-o-meter, but I'm confident that upon sober reflection I will still judge this day to be one of the better ones in a while. I received an email back from Manila at 10:30 this morning which gave me a glimmer of hope. The lady asked me to send her our travel itinerary, which she would forward to the powers-that-be in the hopes that it would bump Promise's application up on the priority list.

Long story short (19 emails to be exact), by 4:30 this afternoon I had been informed that we had received the initial citizenship approval, and we were welcome to send the passport application. I am told that if we have the application in by Friday, we can be assured of a passport by June 12th. We are scheduled to leave by June 14th, so while this is cutting it close, it is definitely better than the prospect of waiting until July.

I would love to tell you that I underwent some profound spiritual renewal in the last 36 hours. I could give you some nice little sermon about how I trusted in God and laid down my burdens, but it would be a load of horse manure. As Bethany has reminded me, I need to give this stuff over to the Lord. I've been waking up routinely at 3am every morning. The mature response would be to get up and pray, but nobody ever accused me of being mature before. Instead, I lay in bed listening to old episodes of The Shadow and Dragnet, trying not to think about my stress.

Oh God, help me to ask for Your help.

There, that's a start, yes? In the meantime, thank you all for your faithful prayers. I'm sure they helped to solve my problem much better than me cursing at the air and leaving stern messages for unsuspecting bureaucrats. Please continue to pray that I am able to complete the passport application and all it's requirements by the end of the week.

Don't pray about my Coke addiction. I'm not ready to give that up yet.

Cheers,
Tim.