A Quiet Heart

We, along with many others, have had visa troubles lately. We've prayed fervently that they'd be solved quickly. At different times it looked as if they were, and then weren't, and then were. We had hoped that the visa resolution would include some much-needed R&R in the States with our beloved families this summer. And we prayed for that. It looked as if our prayers were being answered.

And then, just like that, the door closed. We aren't going home in June. And we had to break it to our kids this morning. We came to India when our kids were old enough to know what they were leaving behind. Old enough to remember the minutiae of their former lives, and to feel the imprint of their closest loved ones on their hearts. So when we told them we would have to wait indefinitely to see everyone again, they were crestfallen.

And so were we. But in the end, a sense of peace washed over each of us. We are where we need to be and He will be faithful to provide what we need--and what our families back home need. And we recall, in the midst of stinging disappointment that

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2nd Peter 3:9, ESV

So we try to look beyond ourselves and see this time in this country in it's larger context. There will be time to go home, but that time is not now. We are, as Elisabeth Eliot writes, trying to 'keep a quiet heart.'