Help!

Okay, I give up!! I'm supposed to be going on a missions trip to Italy in 10 days. In order to go there, I need a passport. Well, actually, I had a passport. But they told me that if it would expire within 6 weeks of my trip, I had to get it renewed. That also meant surrendering my old passport. So our trip is July 1 thru 16. My passport would've expired on July 29th. That means a renewal. EXCEPT that with all the passport hoopla (It's a U.S. passport and I live in Canada), what used to take 6 weeks now can take anywhere up to 14 weeks. Actually, when I sent mine off--April 4th--they said 8 to 10 weeks. Well, that still would've been okay. But with everybody thinking the same thing, the passport agencies are absolutely DELUGED with applications and renewals. The annoyng thing is that my passport WAS good till July 29th and I could've gone with it and come back home and started the process after the trip. Except, they (whoever 'they' are) were worried I might try to stay too long in whatever country I was going to and then my passport wouldn't get me home. So now 'they' aren't worried anymore about me staying too long---I'M worried about getting there in the first place!!!!!! I've been to the State Department website over and over.....home page has a new meaning...The toll free number they give only works in the States. The good people at the City Hall in Sumas, WA have invited me to have a chair and use their phone. (I'll be on the phone waiting a long time says the nice lady there.) I've emailed the State Department and they said in essence, "Keep trying!" I did some tele-exploration and found the regular long distance number of the State Department and they gave me the 'direct line' to the Passport Task Force! That sounded encouraging! So I waited for the appointed time to phone that number--it was important to phone at the appropriate time. And I waited through about, oh I'd guess 35 "Thank you for your patience. Please stay on the line and wait for the first available agent to help you." I didn't mind that. Hope makes the waiting quite bearable. Finally the nice lady answers my call. I give her all my information so she knows I am who I say I am. Yes. She politely listens to my plight. Like I need my passport in hand by June 29th as there is no mail in Canada on Saturday. That's one week from tomorrow! "Well, Mrs. T I will send a fax with your information and situation." .............. That's it?? After all the checking and emailing and phoning and waiting and phoning again, etc. etc. and so forth? Her soft, smooth southern drawl didn't really give much comfort. But yep, that was it!
SOOOOO, that gets me to where I should've been all along. Whose trip is this anyway? I sure can't make anything happen. I guess I've been counting on the good ole US of A to come through for me. But there are probably THOUSANDS of other people like me. And there are only a limited number of passport agents out there. And judging from my wait on the phone there are many people like me who are within days of their departure date too. Funny, I haven't been concerned about it at all until the last week or so. I figured I'd have my passport when they said. So what's with this last minute panic attack anyway? Perhaps its a wakeup call that this is GOD's trip. Just a reminder that He's planning it.
So what now? Do I feverishly pray and phone prayer warriors to pray with me? Do I sit back and relax and just wait. What should my posture be in these next few days? For sure one of openness to what God wants to teach me. Not one of taking His care for granted. But probably one of rest. One of examining my attitude towards going and serving. And rest. And prayer. Talking to Him about it all.
So, being new to this whole blogging thing, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to 'vent' on a blog, but as you can see, I just did. So if it's not cool to do that, you won't read it anyway, right? In the meantime, it has done ME some good. Ha! I need to print this off--especially the previous paragraph--and read it over again when I start to fret.
In the meantime, if you read this and want to send up a prayer for my passport and me, that'd be okay too. Thanks for "listening".
And I'll let y'all know when it comes......