**Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.** Proverbs 3:5-6
Well, if you read my last post called Gotta Fly, you know that we were supposed to be about 30,000 ft in the air. But the Sovereign Hand of our God decided it was not a good day to fly. Late Tuesday night we received a text message informing us that our Wednesday evening flight was canceled due to weather. Our plans came to a abrupt halt and we pivoted. We prayed and got in touch with the airline and by midnight we had new flight plans for Friday.
What do we do now? What do we unpack? What do we do with a couple more days here Stateside? The questions fall over us like a waterfall.
2020/2021—-History may call them the years of flexibility. We all have learned (hopefully) to be flexible, to change direction overnight. We learned to work from home. We learned new ways to lead and minister digitally. New ways to get our groceries and household goods.
We learned how to get exercise on a regular basis without leaving home. We fell in love with YouTube and its instructional videos. We learned how to entertain ourselves, day after day after day. We learned what a Zoom meeting is.
We learned how to “homeschool”. We all learned how to reconnect with our children and our spouse. OR we didn’t.
We learned that life as we know it can change overnite. We learned more than we would ever want to know about biology and disease control. We learned to appreciate our health and our loved ones more than ever before.
We adapted, learned, turned around and around, lived with our directional flasher perpetually on.
When we got the text from the airline about the cancellation our first reaction was…..WHAT??? We JUST finished packing!….Then a minute later…Well, OKAY….then…WHATEVER….What do we need to do now? Then we got online with the airline. Our reactions took about 5 minutes tops.
You see, a few years ago, I would have had a tantrum. I would have found a dozen reasons why I hated airline companies. I would have whined and complained and had a hissy fit, possibly for hours. But, thankfully, before we every heard of “covid”, my husband and I had been learning again and again to be problem solvers.
The thing is, the problems came by seasons, or monthly or even weekly. But not daily, not unceasingly. Not like life in a pandemic. Missionaries are used to being flexible and adaptable. But this was all of that on steroids.
So, when our flights were canceled –again– we barely noticed. We noticed just enough to get the problem worked out and now we have moved on.
Will the change in plans effect us once we get back to Spain? Absolutely. It really messed up quite a few things for us. But, again, we will adapt and figure it out. Because that’s what we all learned to do in 2020/2021, right?
Ultimately, we learned that WE are NOT in charge of our lives. GOD is.
So, Okay, God, we trust you. It is for our good. We don’t understand it. We haven’t understood much this past year and a half. But we trust you.
We have put this, too, in your Hands and we know You will do what is best for us. You will guide us and You will be in charge. Just like we should have always let you be. But it took a pandemic to really drive the lesson home.
So, while we wait for the latest version of a flight ‘home’….it’s back to Dunkin’ Donuts!