Disappointment. We all know it well. It recently hit us pretty hard when we went to the airport to fly home to Zambia and discovered that I didn't have my current passport. We searched and searched to no avail and ultimately had to cancel our flight. Although I had a peace about not flying home that day, I was still disappointed. We both were. We cried a bit and didn't get much sleep that night, but we went to church the next morning and scheduled an appointment to get a new passport as soon as possible.
There were a lot of different questions and thoughts about us not being able to fly out when were supposed to...
"Satan is trying to keep you away from your ministry."
"Are y'all doing ok?"
"God was protecting you from something."
"Do you think that this was a sign that you're supposed to stay here?"
Were we ok? No. We are now, but at first it was really frustrating to have to cancel our flight. We had packed up 14 pieces of luggage, went through all of the emotional goodbyes, drove for two hours to the airport, and in our minds we were heading home. So, to be told that we couldn't go home... Well, how would you feel? Like I said, we're fine now, and as I write this we're 24 hours away from flying out, but it hurt not being able to go back to the place that God has called us to.
If anything, this whole ordeal has proven to us that Zambia is indeed where we are supposed to be. No, we don't think that this was a sign that we are supposed to stay in the States. If God was using this as a way to tell us that our work in Zambia was done, we would have felt the Holy Spirit pulling us back the whole time that we were trying to push forward. I've felt that before. I've pushed forward doing something that seemed right; a good thing, even! But it wasn't what God wanted for me. I know the feeling of being outside of God's will, and this isn't that. We're right where God wants us.
Zambia is definitely where He wants us, but maybe, for whatever reason, He didn't want us on that plane. Could He have been protecting us from something? Perhaps. Both of the flights arrived at their destinations safely, so it wasn't protection from the flights. I'm hesitant to agree that Satan was trying to keep us away from ministry simply because I don't like giving Satan undue credit. We do live in a fallen world, and God does allow bad things happen. In fact, in Isaiah 45:7 God says, "I make well-being and cause calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things."
We can suppose all we want, but how can we really know unless God tells us? Maybe He was protecting us from something. Maybe He wanted us to do something else here in the States before we left for two years. Maybe we simply made a mistake and misplaced my passport. All I can say for certain is that God knows why we didn't go home when we originally planned. It's not my place to find a reason, but it IS my place as a follower of Christ to continue to trust God, even when things don't go the way we planned them.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways..." (Isaiah 55:8-9)