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!
