Travel

Isn’t it amazing how we move around our world?

Yesterday I spoke with a girl at Greg’s office.  I asked her where her friend was and she said, “Liberia!” And today, our middle prince will fly back to Virginia for his second semester of college.

I have a friend who left on a cruise yesterday.  For pleasure.  Not even a destination, just to go and get some much needed rest and relaxation.

I often think if someone from Bible times showed up on my front door step and I “drove” the eleven miles to church what they would think.  Or for that matter, what my grandfather (who has been dead 36 years) would say if he could see the spaghetti bowl of roads I live in.

On July 9, 2009 our youngest and I boarded a plan for a non-stop flight to her beloved birthplace.  The trip (other than our excitement) was both uneventful and typical. The pilot came on announcing we would land in 20 minutes.  We were only 60 miles from Myrtle Beach.  Hope and I did our best to lean toward the window and try to recognize some landmark, body of water or road system through the twinkling night sky.

As we meandered closer to our destination, we began to see the hotels on the beach we remembered from years of calling Myrtle Beach home.  As we made our descent to touch down and were bracing ourselves to be the first to squeal, “We’re here!”  We saw the neon sign, “Welcome to Myrtle Beach” scripted across the terminal.  I felt I could even make out my in-laws figures ready to barrel through the gates to hug us.

However, our plane began an abrupt nose-up, take off pattern.  In fact, we did begin to head right back into the darkened sky we had just left.

Even at 11 years old, our daughter turned to me to ask, “What’s He doing?” (It was interesting she assumed the pilot was a man?!?) “Where are we going?”  “What’s going on?”

It was almost like a dream.  As I looked back I saw the passengers faces of concern, yet I could hear them asking the same questions I just heard my daughter ask.

We waited for explanation from our trusted pilot or at least the flight staff.  However, there was no word.

We apparently regained altitude, repeated the exact flight pattern and landed shortly after that first attempt.  Upon arrival, we heard the canned intercom announcement, “Welcome to Myrtle Beach, the current time is 10:18 and the temperature is a lovely 76 degrees.” No explanation, no apology, no nothing!   As if two attempts are normal…

As I passed in front of the cockpit, there was the normal push and shove of the passengers behind us who were anxious to get off.  The two flight attendants were involved in a discussion of the next boarding passengers. I tried to find a polite moment to ask, “Hey, could anyone explain to me what just happened?”  However, the shoving from the back pushed me to disembark without an answer.

Now almost three years later, I am still left wondering, “what just happened?” “what really happened.”  Of course there are many explanations from the nervous passengers on that flight and intelligent former pilot friends, but the truth is, I will never know.

During that particular visit, I mulled over that experience.  Resigned to the fact I will never know, I found the spiritual lesson I have gone back to many times in the past three years.

Life like that flight can be predictable – hustling to board, speaking to those you are sitting near, buying unhealthy expensive snacks, but there are circumstances in our lives, in our parenting, in our marriages, in our relationships that are not predictable and we will never understand.

God may choose not to reveal why we are experiencing what we are experiencing.

As the pilot – we will have to trust Him.  There is a plan for His glory.  Our circumstances have been sifted through His hands and He knows what is for our best interest.

Proverbs 19: 21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Today as you experience “travel” (caring for the little ones the Lord has entrusted to you) consider: we may never understand the maneuvers or coordinates, but we can trust Our Precious Heavenly Father is working out a travel pattern that far exceeds our greatest expectations!