本当に旅行に行きたい。(I really want to travel)

In the middle of studying, I just wanted to get down these thoughts. I'm listening/half watching this video right now, and it so makes me want to hop on a plane and go to Japan this instant. I want to travel its streets, speak to its people, lie down on the grass in a park and look at the sky and know that while I'm a stranger and a sojourner on this earth, this is where I belong. I love Japan. 日本が大好き！I want to go right now. Did I already say that? For some reason, it keeps on calling to me, beckoning me, but it seems that I can't go just yet.

But our appetites for things should not be what control us. Yes, the idea of going to Japan is a good thing. I mean, I've devoted a good portion of my life to learning its language and getting acquainted with many of its ways. Yes, I feel like God is calling me there. But that doesn't mean I have to be there now. 

I'll admit it: right now, half of me feels like the author of this proverb: 

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life." (Prov. 13:12)

 And like Langford Hughes:

"What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?"

These ideas have been running in my head, threatening to control my thoughts. And make me sad. Because right now, I don't get what I want. I didn't get the scholarship to go study in Kyoto; I don't think I can go on a summer project to Tokyo. I'm not going to Japan anytime soon. And I haven't been in two years.

But the other half of me says that God knows my hopes and my dreams. And that he has encouraged them. And that I can wait. It is possible for me to wait to go to Japan. I have my whole life ahead of me. If I want to live in Japan, I'll probably be away from my family and friends there. I should treasure the gift of waiting now. I should treasure the times that I have with those I love here now, instead of always looking into the future. I've told friends similar things, but will I believe it for myself? Will I be able to tend the sheep now and fight my bears now so that I can kill giants later? With God's help, yes. My appetites will not control me! And going to Japan is so not worth my birthright. I don't need to give everything up at the wrong time for its sake.

Oh God, help me to believe this. Help me to have patience and perseverance. Mold me into the person you want me to be for your name's sake.

Not that I'm necessarily suffering now, but this verse came to mind when writing this:

"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5