Yesterday (Monday) I took the train to London to visit the Latvian embassy. I couldn't reach them by email or phone, so it seemed a personal visit might be the best way to get a swift answer.
It was.
Long story short, the decision on my application has been "prolonged until October the twenty-fifth" pending submission of "additional documents and information." There's three reasons they gave for the denial of my application, each of them fairly minor and (hopefully) easy to correct. The best one of all was that the university did not include my middle name, which for the sake of this post we'll call Anthony,¹ in their official invitation which they filed with the government. Easy mistake to make - I don't hold it against them, especially as there were a couple other elements of the application which need to be amended² - but it's slightly comical as well.
Of all the things that could hold up my return to Latvia, I did not expect my middle name to be one of them.
I actually felt a sense of relief when I finally realized that I wouldn't be back in Riga by this weekend. Not because I don't want to be back there as soon as possible - I do - but this has carried on for so long, I had reached the point where I just wanted to know. Something. Anything. For the past two months, I've been in a state of constant anticipation. Any day could herald my imminent departure. It makes it hard to plan and get on with life when you're always on call.
Well, at long last I know the day I can return. October twentieth.³
This means I'll need to delay the start of my studies until next semester,⁴ and that I've got one more month⁵ left here in England.
Disappointing? Definitely. But after two months of uncertainty, it's good to know something, even if the information is not what I'd hoped to hear.
I was reading in John chapter eleven while on the train back from London yesterday. It's a great story - Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead! How can you top that? - but hidden behind that bright and glorious overlay are some other truths which are harder to understand.
Jesus could have gone straight to Lazarus as soon as he heard he was sick. That would have made sense. He also could have not gone at all - after all, there were people in that region who wanted to stone hime to death - and that would have been understood given the circumstances.
Instead, he waits - long enough for Lazarus to die - and then he goes anyway, so that "the Son of God will receive glory from this."
Ok, so we know the end of this story: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, God gets glorified, and everyone lives happily ever after. Right?
Well, except for the part where the religious leaders redouble their efforts to kill Jesus.
Oh, and they decide to kill Lazarus, too.⁶
Happy endings don't always have happy endings.
God's timing does not always make sense. Even if a situation is designed to give him glory, it may not even look like that in the short-term. Frankly, in my finite understanding and feeble grasp of God's purposes and intentions, I struggle to see how delaying my return to Latvia by three months - especially after it took so long, with so many prayers and tears and effort to get there in the first place - does anyone any good.
In the divine timeline that God operates in, there is room for us to be confused. To not understand. To say "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." To be frustrated, angry, and to question his timing. To say "Hey, Jesus, you could have easily had me back in Riga by now; what gives?"
And in between the divine and the human understanding of time, Jesus enters in not as someone who wants to judge us for not understanding how or why or when...
He comes to cry with us.
To feel the burden of confusion, the pain of not knowing, of loss, of unmet expectations.
It's a relief to realize that I don't have to understand. And it's an even bigger relief to realize that Jesus does.
¹Because that's what it is
²Including my diploma; apparently it needs to be "apostilled,"whatever that is. I thought I'd already been through enough diploma drama; apparently not.
³I can be in Latvia - or anywhere in the Schengen zone - for up to ninety days every six months. Since I initially arrived in Riga on April 19th, that means that a "new" six month period will start six months later. I need a residency permit if I want to stay for any longer than ninety days in a six-month span - which I obviously do. In other news, I have learned far more information about visas, residency permits, and other related topics in the past several months than is likely healthy.
⁴Classes start this week, so this semester is a wash. I still need to find out if I can defer my enrollment until next semester or not.
⁵Thirty-two days, to be precise. Not that I'm counting.
⁶Has to be one of the more illogical decisions ever made: "What should we do with the guy who Jesus raised from the dead?" "I know, let's kill him! That'll teach him to stay dead!"
It was.
Long story short, the decision on my application has been "prolonged until October the twenty-fifth" pending submission of "additional documents and information." There's three reasons they gave for the denial of my application, each of them fairly minor and (hopefully) easy to correct. The best one of all was that the university did not include my middle name, which for the sake of this post we'll call Anthony,¹ in their official invitation which they filed with the government. Easy mistake to make - I don't hold it against them, especially as there were a couple other elements of the application which need to be amended² - but it's slightly comical as well.
Of all the things that could hold up my return to Latvia, I did not expect my middle name to be one of them.
I actually felt a sense of relief when I finally realized that I wouldn't be back in Riga by this weekend. Not because I don't want to be back there as soon as possible - I do - but this has carried on for so long, I had reached the point where I just wanted to know. Something. Anything. For the past two months, I've been in a state of constant anticipation. Any day could herald my imminent departure. It makes it hard to plan and get on with life when you're always on call.
Well, at long last I know the day I can return. October twentieth.³
This means I'll need to delay the start of my studies until next semester,⁴ and that I've got one more month⁵ left here in England.
Disappointing? Definitely. But after two months of uncertainty, it's good to know something, even if the information is not what I'd hoped to hear.
I was reading in John chapter eleven while on the train back from London yesterday. It's a great story - Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead! How can you top that? - but hidden behind that bright and glorious overlay are some other truths which are harder to understand.
Jesus could have gone straight to Lazarus as soon as he heard he was sick. That would have made sense. He also could have not gone at all - after all, there were people in that region who wanted to stone hime to death - and that would have been understood given the circumstances.
Instead, he waits - long enough for Lazarus to die - and then he goes anyway, so that "the Son of God will receive glory from this."
Ok, so we know the end of this story: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, God gets glorified, and everyone lives happily ever after. Right?
Well, except for the part where the religious leaders redouble their efforts to kill Jesus.
Oh, and they decide to kill Lazarus, too.⁶
Happy endings don't always have happy endings.
God's timing does not always make sense. Even if a situation is designed to give him glory, it may not even look like that in the short-term. Frankly, in my finite understanding and feeble grasp of God's purposes and intentions, I struggle to see how delaying my return to Latvia by three months - especially after it took so long, with so many prayers and tears and effort to get there in the first place - does anyone any good.
In the divine timeline that God operates in, there is room for us to be confused. To not understand. To say "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." To be frustrated, angry, and to question his timing. To say "Hey, Jesus, you could have easily had me back in Riga by now; what gives?"
And in between the divine and the human understanding of time, Jesus enters in not as someone who wants to judge us for not understanding how or why or when...
He comes to cry with us.
To feel the burden of confusion, the pain of not knowing, of loss, of unmet expectations.
It's a relief to realize that I don't have to understand. And it's an even bigger relief to realize that Jesus does.
¹Because that's what it is
²Including my diploma; apparently it needs to be "apostilled,"whatever that is. I thought I'd already been through enough diploma drama; apparently not.
³I can be in Latvia - or anywhere in the Schengen zone - for up to ninety days every six months. Since I initially arrived in Riga on April 19th, that means that a "new" six month period will start six months later. I need a residency permit if I want to stay for any longer than ninety days in a six-month span - which I obviously do. In other news, I have learned far more information about visas, residency permits, and other related topics in the past several months than is likely healthy.
⁴Classes start this week, so this semester is a wash. I still need to find out if I can defer my enrollment until next semester or not.
⁵Thirty-two days, to be precise. Not that I'm counting.
⁶Has to be one of the more illogical decisions ever made: "What should we do with the guy who Jesus raised from the dead?" "I know, let's kill him! That'll teach him to stay dead!"