Exercising Patience

You know the song that goes, "Mama said there'd be days like this. There'd be days like this mama said."? Well, today was one of those days.


It started out okay (except for KU losing—bum!). Everything in the apartment was fine. We opened the door to go out into the world. No problem there. Down the elevator we went and said "Namashkar" to the guard at the bottom of our apartment building. Everything was normal, everyone was smiling.


And then, we walked out to the street…


The street was abuzz with people. There were horns blaring. It was hot.


We needed a taxi. This is generally no problem as it takes us about two minutes to hail one. Today, we watched taxi after taxi go by, but all of them were full. Julie and I even tried to work both sides of the street in search of a taxi, but to no avail. There just were no empty ones.


We decided to walk down the street and get in an auto taxi (baby taxi). We thought it would take us to the mall where there are always taxis waiting. As we approached the auto line, we saw police… and gobs of people. Apparently the majority of auto taxis were not running thanks to a new law put into effect today. They were supposed to have updated their meter or something like that by today. Most hadn't—hence the police and gobs of people who were expecting an auto taxi ride, but weren't getting to ride in one.


So, there Julie and I are, with sweat trickling down our backs, in the midst the chaos of traffic, people, and honking searching for a taxi, a bus, anything to take us to where we needed to go. From behind us (and I mean directly behind us—we were probably right in front of the speaker), the Call to Pr@yer sounds. At this point, the situation turns rather humorous as Julie and I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of our situation. How weird is our life! Only here could all of this be going on at once!


We found a bus, then taxi to take us to our destination: the Foreign Rail Office. Julie and I have been here a couple times before. We have to take a number and wait until we are called to get our rail tickets. They usually take about 30 minutes to get to us, but no big deal. Today we arrive and they are on break, scheduled to return at 1:30. You know how in America if your break ends at 1:30, you had better start working at 1:30? Well, here if your break ends at 1:30, you begin to think about coming back to work. As a result, the person didn't come back to the desk until 1:45. Today we were numbers 50 and 51. The first number we heard called was 38. Julie and I waited…and waited…and waited. No one was moving. No numbers were being called. After about an hour and a half, there finally started to be some action. We heard, "46…52." Wait! Hold it! What happened to 50 and 51? We pleaded our case with the guy at the desk to which his response was an unconcerned "Sit and wait. You'll be next." Eventually, we got to talk to the guy who can give us our rail tickets. Come to find out both trains we wanted did not have seats available on them. Great! We opted for some other, less desired, tickets and gladly left the rail office.


It wasn't too hard to find a taxi to take us home. Julie told him we wanted to go close to a certain mall, on a specific street, next to a well-known cinema all in Bengali. Those are three directives that are very specific to get us to our apartment building and leave no doubt of where we need to go. Somehow though, he managed to take us to another cinema that was not anywhere near where we wanted to go. And, of course, it was our fault that we ended up there. After about an hour we made it back to our flat.


We were tired, frustrated, and hungry. We only had about 30 minutes before we had to go back out into this crazy place we now live and neither one of us were looking forward to it. After I had a Diet Coke and some chocolate, things began to look up a bit. However, I was a bit concerned about finding a taxi or auto taxi to take us to the language class we had to attend. After all, we hadn't been too successful earlier in the day.


Dragging our feet, we ventured back out onto the street. I lifted my voice toward heaven and said, "Okay, Lsrd, we need a taxi." Just about as soon as the words left my lips, a taxi pulled up next to us. The people that were in it wanted to get out at that exact location. The taxi driver agreed to take us where we wanted to go. He was a very pleasant man who had a twinkle in his eye as he drove us down the hectic street. When we got to the University, he pulled in the gate and drove down the university lane. No one had ever done that before. I felt a bit like royalty. With a chuckle, we got out of the taxi and went on our merry way to class.


Overall, today was an exercise in patience. That is one Fruit that I tend to have up to a certain limit, but once that limit is reached, the patience runs out. Sometimes I think Gsd uses situations like the ones earlier in my day to stretch me and draw me closer to Himself. But, He knows my limit too. Gsd, in all His goodness, has mercy on my poor soul that has run out of patience and answers my plea for a taxi. Some people may have called it coincidence, but I know it wasn't. Gsd was reminding me that He is still there, He is still listening, He is still caring. He loves me enough to allow me to be pushed to my limit to grow closer to Him, but He also loves me enough to provide what thought I needed when I had been pushed as far as I could go. What a great Gsd I serve! His goodness never ceases!