It’s been quite some time since I last touched base with the blogging world. Forgive my absenteeism. Jill, Jovi, and I were traveling over the holidays. We returned home for one week before heading out again for meetings with my denomination in Ohio. The last couple of weeks I feel like we’re just trying to catch up with work at the church and around the house, so my blogging has been on the back burner. But, it is good to be home.
Do you ever feel like God is just messing with ya? I’ve never really thought this, but by the end of our trip, I was beginning to wonder. We headed out Christmas morning to fly to Minnesota for few days to celebrate with Jill’s family. Our first flight was canceled. We showed up at the airport for the next available flight, and it was delayed for about 3 hours. We finally boarded the plane and took off. We landed in Chicago and were supposed to have a brief layover, but they didn’t have any gates open for us to get off of the plane, so we sat on the runway for over an hour, causing us to miss our connecting flight. We hung in Chicago for quite some time....our next flight was delayed, but eventually we finally made it to MN.
While in MN Jovi got sick and pretty much hated everybody but her mom for those few days. The following Tuesday morning we got in the car to drive from Jill’s parent’s house to the Twin Cities to catch our flight home. We set out really early because it was snowing hard. A drive that normally takes about 2 ½ to 3 hours took us about 5 ½ hours. We were stopped for over an hour at one point because of an accident. We finally arrived and stood in line for over an hour waiting to get our ticket. All the flights were delayed. Eventually we boarded the plane at about 8 pm. After boarding the plane we sat on the plane for over an hour before taking off….familiar story. Remember all of this was with a 6 month old baby! We finally got to Chicago. Our next flight was delayed again (making it a perfect 4 out of 4 for delays). We tried to drive to see my parents in Ohio, but the snowy roads nearly killed us, so we eventually stopped at 2:30 in the morning. What a nightmare!
So, what did I learn from all of this? 1) While part of me wants to say a big “Bah Humbug” to ever traveling again over the holidays, I came to realize that my experience this Christmas was much more an authentic representation of the first Christmas than my usual Christmas rituals. Rather than waking up Christmas morning to a big breakfast with family, laughing together, opening presents, and celebrating, this Christmas I was stressed, traveling, dealing with circumstances that were beyond my control, and trying to appease a crying, tired baby. I can imagine that Joseph must have felt the same way about the Roman government forcing him to travel to Bethlehem with his pregnant wife as I did about the airlines this Christmas.
2) True joy is most apparent in the midst of suffering. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we really “suffered” on this trip, but the lack of sleep, the stress, the crying kid, the bad weather, and all the delays can certainly steal one’s Christmas spirit. After our second miserable day of traveling, while we were sitting on the plane on the runway, most people’s tempers were getting hot. You could hear people on the plane rustling in their seats, complaining to one another, and being very short with the flight-attendants. I was just like everybody else, getting very frustrated, but then I prayed and God spoke to my heart and reminded me how blessed I was. In that moment I couldn’t help but smile. I began to think that God was just messing with me this whole trip, like some cosmic practical joke, and it made me laugh. I realized that joy is so much deeper than our circumstances. I chatted and joked with the flight-attendant and let her hold Jovi. Jovi eventually started crying, and the flight-attendant asked me what’s wrong with her. I said, “She hates your airline,” and the people in our section all started laughing. Things really weren’t that bad. I don’t want to be happy; I want to have joy
They say that weight training works because it stresses out muscles and breaks them down. Then when your muscles get rest and protein, they recover and become stronger than they were before you worked them out.
