Applying for a visa for another country (or even for this country by foreigners) is a painstaking, harrowing, and downright annoying procedure. There are piles and piles of paperwork that must be gathered, printed and submitted. Proof of income, work, housing, marriage and divorces, and in my case, of the very relationship itself that I had with my husband. All this had to be sent to some government agency in England – my new Motherland to be. Along with those proofs, documentation of our love story was required. Any emails, photographs, flight records and the like all had to be printed out and remitted to some government agent, who would then approve or disapprove the validity of our relationship, and decide if we could be together.
It is a scary process to move to another country but also one step at a time isn’t fast enough!
Once the application for the visa has been submitted, there is no telling how long the process will take until they get it. I was told that it could be anywhere from 4-13 weeks. How is one supposed to plan a life around 4-13 weeks? And even that number is not a guarantee, because they could return the application saying there was insufficient information, and make one start the process all over again.
So my husband and I played it smart: we hired an immigration attorney; someone to tell us whether the packet we prepared would be acceptable or not, so that we would only have to go through this nerve-wracking process once.
Having been married and divorced a few times, we were told that we only needed to submit my latest divorce decree, along with my recent marriage certificate, because obviously one couldn’t get married again without having been properly divorced. However, once we stuffed our papers into a huge packet of over 1,000 pages, we received a notice that ALL of my papers were required; which included my first divorce decree. And I didn’t have that document.
I hadn’t spoken to my ex-husband in almost 20 years, but this necessity caused me to reach out in a Facebook message to him. “Do you have our divorce decree?” The question hung in the air, all weekend, with no response. I went down to the county records office on Monday morning, only to find out that my divorce back in 1999 was on microfiche, and it would take weeks aka forever to get me a copy.
The thing about the visa application process is you only have a small amount of time to give them any additional required documents; otherwise they send everything back to you and tell you to try again later.
I would be totally fine with this whole process, except that I had trusted our hired attorney and therefore had faith in our application, and thus I had terminated my lease for both my home and my work studio at the end of the month. Both places had been promised to new tenants. Meanwhile, I had a teenager to look after. I needed a place to live and work if suddenly I couldn’t move to England, like I had planned.
This was it. No word from my ex, and the promise of a long, drawn out process was guaranteed by my government offices. Things were looking pretty bleak. In my car, on the way from the county recorder, I screamed and cried, ranted and raved. Why can’t things ever just work out for me? Why must I always have to take extra steps, and even then, who knows if I will get what I was after?
Instead of losing my mind completely, I called my mom. She had been working diligently through A Course In Miracles for quite some time, and she always had some kind of comfort to offer. As I frantically spat the story into her ear, she calmly and lovingly replied “may I invite you to see that everything that is coming up around you is coming from within you?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Yes.”
All of the voices chirped up in my head… “but how?? Why? Who???”
SHHHHHH!!! I shut those voices down, heart and ears open to absorb whatever wisdom my Mom wanted to toss at me.
“How is this all about you? How is everything your fault? Is it really so?” she quietly queried.
And that’s when the light hit. The truth is, life always works out for me. Always. How do I know? I am now before you, alive and breathing. Happy and peaceful. As Louise Hay would say “healthy, whole and complete”.
Sometimes things don’t go according to my timeline. Sometimes they don’t go according to my plan. But the most beautiful, wonderful thing to realize is that things always go according to divine time. Things always work out perfectly.
As I chewed on this thought, I tasted the sweetness of the unknown. I felt a peace, a reassurance settle over me. If there was a delay in my plan, then I must remain here, for some reason bigger than I knew or understood. It would all work out in my favor. It always has and it always will. That is the promise of God, the universe, Buddha, Jesus, or whomever you like to refer to. In that moment, I re-acquainted myself with that truth, and fully made friends with that promise.
My heart rate slowed and my breath deepened. I felt the warm security of the unknown wrap around me like a blanket. I can do this! Whatever “this” is, it will be done, and I will be okay! My daughter will be okay! Everything will be okay! I will hereby let everything unfold in perfect, divine order, and I will stop insisting and resisting that I have it my way.
Acceptance of what IS immediately knocked the weight of expectation off of my shoulder.
Instantaneously, I felt lighter. I was free. I was completely open to whatever wanted to show up next in my life. “Take me wherever you want me to go” I whispered excitedly in my car, to no one, to no thing, and yet, to the world. “I am so happy and grateful for my life and all that happens!”
Smiling, peaceful… I felt my phone buzz. It was my ex. He had my divorce documents and I could pick them up right away.
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