(written on the 11th)
Tough day today.
I’ve been procrastinating all this New Zealand stuff because…
Ugh.
- It’s weird: Why would God want me to go to New Zealand? It doesn’t make logical sense. Yes, it’s true that multiple times God has directed me to do things that don’t make sense, and after following that guidance, I was glad I did, but the “weirdest” of them all is still outstanding, so to speak, so I still struggle to trust, and this is just… weird.
- Yes, I have wanted to go back to New Zealand, but I actually don’t really want to anymore. My desires are to lift the world, make as big of a difference as I can, not take a long vacation. But not only have I felt like God is nudging me to go, I’ve felt like He’s nudging me to go for a long time, so I’m applying for a 6-month Visa, and that might not even be long enough?
- I also don’t want to go because I’m going to be lonely–very lonely. Traveling by myself this Spring taught me that. I’m not built to be alone. I long for a special someone most of all, but at least a traveling companion, preferably one with similar goals and hopes and dreams with whom I could work to accomplish my lifting the world goals.
- I also don’t want to go because I want to help my sister and brother-in-law get their house to the point that they can move in, even if it’s not done.
- I also don’t want to go to New Zealand because it’s a massive headache and huge complication in a brain that’s still trying to descend from the heights of over…loasion? 😅
- I also don’t want to go because New Zealand is likely going to be a place of strong temptation. Prostitution is legal there, and though I don’t expect I would actually act on those kinds of temptations, heck, I’m still a virgin, I’ve also scared myself seeing the kinds of actions I’ve considered, and I was using porn, New Zealand prostitute sites were some of the places I’d go. Why tempt fate?
- And what about my parents? They’re both in their 80s. I’m gonna run off for half a year or more to the other side of the world?
What I want to do is overcome my minor PTSD reactions to working on the book and the nonprofit organization, overcome my struggles to focus, overcome my near complete lack of drive and passion, overcome my loss of belief in myself, and help my sister get her house done at the same time that I write my book and get my organization started.
😅
Sure, one could say being in New Zealand will simplify my life. I’d be thousands of miles away from the things that draw my attention, and then maybe I can focus on my book, but I know myself. Barring a miracle from God, I’ll find distractions everywhere, and I still won’t get anything done. That’s what I do. I find distractions to avoid because I’m always afraid I’m gonna get it wrong, I lack faith in myself these days, my brain doesn’t work anymore, I feel like I fail at everything I try to do and badly, and despite a gazillion experiences to the contrary, I struggle, still, to trust God.
[deep sigh]
So… all that as an intro to say that after procrastinating for what, a couple weeks now? I finally got up the courage to take a faithful step forward by filling out and applying for a visa. Until today, I’d been just learning a little bit here and there but not really digging in seriously. Just gathering a little bits of information.
Today, I finally had the courage to take a step forward, and just as with seemingly every other thing that I try to do that’s hard for me, after I finally get up the courage to take the step into the dark, I get smacked by a baseball bat in the dark.
I think I spent probably 10 hours today working on Visa stuff. I didn’t work. I didn’t help Heather and Hans with anything, I don’t think. I just sat there for hours… and hours in front of my laptop fighting with all the visa/immigration stuff.
They want me to prove that I’m actually going to leave New Zealand once my visit is done.
One of the ways to prove it is an outbound flight, except at the very beginning of the visa, they recommend that you not purchase any non-refundable travel tickets until your Visa has been approved.
😶
They also suggest that you can provide an itinerary of what you’re going to do while you’re there.
Well, I’m going to buy a self-contained vehicle and travel the country for 6 months. Nothing I can prove there other than that’s what I say I’m going to do.
No hotel reservations. No tickets for anything anywhere. No flight in or out yet.
They also want me to prove that I have enough funds to cover my needs while I’m in New Zealand. One of their suggestions is bank account statements for the previous 6 months. But in their requirements, they require you to attach all the statements together as a single PDF I’m not allowed to send six different PDFs for six different months.
Right, apparently they are unaware that bank statements in the united states, even pdfs, are not combinable. Coded into the statements themselves is information that prohibits PDF combining programs from combining statements. They are uneditable, not even to combine.
So apparently, I guess I need to print them all out and then scan them together as one PDF document.
I think Heather might have a printer? But I don’t think she has a scanner. I might be able to do it with my phone…
And then there’s the employment. They want me to show that my employer is expecting me back in the future. Well, I’m self-employed. And they say they are okay with people who are self-employed, but then once you say yourself employed, they want you to say what company you work for and what their address is and what their phone number is, so it’s like uh… not sure how to handle this. I’m self-employed but don’t have an actual company that I own.
So it’s stressful because I can’t provide much of what they want me to provide to prove what they want me to prove, so I’m concerned I’m going to get denied because I can’t give them what they want.
So I spent 10 hours, or whatever it was, and I was probably in relatively good spirits for the first 9 and 1/2. Every time I started to get frustrated, I just tossed the frustration up like powder and let it blow away on the wind, but by the end, probably that last half hour, I finally let myself get discouraged to the point that when I talked to my mom about it, I just started crying.
It’s just so much more for my barely functional brain to take on right now along with everything else. I don’t want to go. I’d rather just drive up to Canada to somewhere beautiful in the Canadian Rockies and hang out for a while. I’m already set up for that. I can go anywhere and do anything anywhere anytime.
Why New Zealand?
And part of me feels crappy because there are lots of people who would absolutely love to have the life flexibility to go to New Zealand, let alone for six months, possibly more, and here I am complaining about having to go.
And I don’t want to complain to God. If He’s really nudging me to go, then it’s gonna be perfect no matter what happens there, a beautiful gift from God, so I feel crappy complaining about this beautiful gift from God just because I’m slow to trust God and my ability to understand Him right now.
After hours and hours and hours, I finally got out of the trailer, and though already sunset, I headed over to the JHKP to give my brain a breather.
I chatted with my mom for a little bit. Chatted with Cory for a little bit. Chatted with my sister Heather for a little bit.
Cried a little bit.
Spent a very little bit in my soaking pool. headed back to the property, chatted with Hans briefly, and called it a night.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have been able to withstand the discouragement and the frustration each time it came nearly all day. It wasn’t until the very end that I finally let it get to me, but compared to how I’ve been in the past, it was success after success after success, followed by crash. So… much improved, at least.
- I’m grateful to be clean and sober. If I make it through the night tonight, that’ll be 3 months clean. I continue to be deeply grateful to God for my sobriety and for miracles in that arena that I don’t want to share publicly.
- I’m grateful for loving family and friends who are there to help lift me when I’m struggling.
- I’m grateful for the beauties and the comfort that I feel being out in nature.
- I’m grateful that I’ve made at least a decent amount of progress on the Visa.
- I’m grateful that the airline that I’m tentatively planning on purchasing my ticket through has a 14-day ticket holding program that’s only 15 bucks. So I’ve reserved my travel dates and have frozen the price and at this point need to add international service to my T-Mobile plan, so I can call their immigration office and get assistance, so I’m least likely to be denied on my application.
Success:
- Definitely improvement in dealing with the more uncomfortable blessings. 🎉
Improvement:
- I would like to trust God more and be able to hold on to my past spiritual experiences as my source of strength instead of having to have a seemingly endless supply of confirmations in order to have confidence in God. As I currently am now, I apparently need an endless supply. 😕 I don’t want to be that faithless.
Thought of the Day:
Trusting in the Lord means we must be willing to put our lives in His hands. It means we must be willing to follow His direction, even when we don’t fully understand the reasons why.”
~ Elder David A. Bednar
Hand of God In My Life Today:
Strength to improve today.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 