I am a uni student living in Brisbane, Australia, and started dating Ella almost four years ago after visiting Vancouver, Canada. Since then we’ve visited each other every 6 months until 2019, when I was able to live and work in Vancouver and have the whole year living in the same city with Ella on a young person’s visa. It was special having that much time together over that year, and it felt like it laid a solid foundation in our relationship which we could build on. Over the next couple of years we had both planned to do an exchange at each other’s universities as a way of being together while we finished our courses. It came as quite a shock then, when Covid happened and international travel ceased indefinitely, throwing our plans completely up in the air and not leaving any certainty as to when we would be able to see each other next. Since then, it’s certainly been a journey in learning to trust God with such an unknown situation, which is something I felt stirred to share as part of this testimony.
I know I don’t have to make sense of God’s ways as they are so above mine, but when I actually embrace the situation He has for me, something real happens between me and Him
At the end of March 2020, when restrictions were imposed and the long-term implications of Covid were quite unknown, we had a small house meeting where I was sharing about my situation with Ella, and how it was quite uncertain whether or not she would be able to come over to Brisbane in July 2020 as we had planned. In response to this someone in the group shared a prophecy for me, which I’ve kept coming back to as a reminder of how God feels about my situation. The essence of the prophecy was really God encouraging me to embrace this time with Him, as He has so much more to build between me and Him. The last line was ‘Treasure this waiting with Me’ which felt like something to really trust God with as it definitely wasn’t how I naturally viewed this time while Ella and I were apart. About a week before I received the prophecy, I felt the word ‘embrace’ which was tied to the uncertainty of Covid and not knowing when we would be able to see each other again. It touched me then that God used the very same word, earlier in the prophecy, to emphasise how much I can really trust Him with this, and that His direction to really embrace this time was exactly what He was wanting me to do.
