More craziness…

Just spent the last 30 minutes dealing with the United staff again…and they re-routed us yet again… now we’re scheduled to arrive in Uganda a day later – Dec 31….

This Glorious Struggle

When she dropped by yesterday, Lindsey left a book at our house called Unearth.  Written by Autumn Rogers and Christy Vidrine, it is about reentering our North American world after traveling overseas, the middle land as they call it.  Now I know we are actually leaving the US right now not returning, but since I’ve been through this process multiple times before and had a few hours to kill, I opened the small book with the black and white cover curious to see what they had to offer.

Here’s something I read earlier as we were sitting at Gate C9 at O’Hare trying to decide between McDonald’s and Starbucks:

The glorious struggle is for us to live differently… So how do you live differently, more healthy after coming home from these experiences?  Is it enough to commit one night a year camped out for a cause or attend an annual missions conference?  Do you think God’s plan was to cultivate so little in you through this process?

This short section causes tears cloud my eyesight every time I read it (this is the 4th).  I think it’s happening for multiple reasons.  The most shallow being that despite my wonderful night of rest on my “heavenly” bed followed by my heavenly shower (this entails 2 shower heads for those of you who don’t know), I am still exhausted.  By the way, Beth, I have to say when you were going on and on about this whole hotel heavenly line a few months ago, I didn’t put much stock in it, but now I know, as is the case with many of my opinions when they vary from yours, that I was wrong.  Anyway, back to the quote…

I think underneath the tiredness, tears appear because this glorious struggle has been mine since I returned from China over two years ago.  I wonder constantly what is enough?  Yearly mission trips?  Praying?  Wednesday night world focused discussion groups?  Working for non-profits?  Planning crazy around-the-world-in-50-days trips?  Those words already haunt me — was God’s plan to cultivate so little?  I am absolutely terrified of my life being so little in light of all that God has invested in my world education not to mention my salvation.

Is my life really transformed?  Am I doing the hard work of living differently in each new day or simply moving from cause to cause and from one trip to the next adventure in an effort to avoid settling into my American house furnished with clashing colors from the experiences and knowledge of multiple continents and peoples?  I know I’m scared of being bored and settling, in the becoming satisfied with less sense of the word.  But I do feel a need to settle the way sediment does in water.  I need all the gook to fall to the bottom so I can see clearly and so it can be removed.

Seems strange to be having these thoughts now, a couple hours before country hopping for the next 7 weeks, but even amidst all the travel, I know He is inviting me to sit, while He bends over with His hands squarely on my shoulders and eyes focused on mine, reminding me to be still and know He is God.  He is enough even in my little and lack and He will continue to fight for, discipline, redirect and purify what He has redeemed.

SSSS

I forgot to mention in the last post about our crazy SSSS screening…

Both Liz and I had this lovely “SSSS” printed on our boarding pass (both in Austin and Chicago).  It apparently means we get the privilege of a “special screening.”  So, basically, they pull you aside, do a thorough check of your bag and belongings and use this cool little cloths that check for explosives…  And they of course pat you down, and then once they see you’re not a terrorist, they send you on your way…

At the Chicago checkpoint, we got the “special screening”, and my shoes were apparently causing issues…  the guy had to call some supervisor-type to come over and check my shoes…  What’s funny is that Liz and I have the EXACT same pair of shoes… we got these special Keen outdoorsy type sandals, and they’re the only shoes each of us brought for our trip.

Oh, we also got to get patted down in this cool little glass room…hahah!!  Pretty exciting…  I couldn’t help but laugh and smile the whole time we were getting checked…

So yeah…after running the shoes by again, and inspecting them manually, they handed them over and sent us on our way.

I have a feeling we have lots of “special screenings” ahead of us…

-b

Our adventure begins…

Well, we haven’t even left the country yet, and things have already been crazy… I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised…this kind of crazy stuff seems to happen to me pretty often…

Just as I was beginning to feel all excited about boarding a plane and beginning our journey, we arrived at our gate to find that our flight out of Austin was delayed… I tried really hard to be calm and remember that I’m not in control…but it was so hard!!! I wanted to be in a plane already!!! I tried to see if the United lady could switch our flight to the AA flight that was leaving to CHI soon, but she said she didn’t want to go through having to switch our luggage, etc…she also informed us that we would definitely miss our connection flight, so we’d have to go the United Customer Service desk in Chicago to get a hotel voucher, and see what flights they could put us on for Monday. I sighed a little, and walked over to those uncomfortable lobby chairs with Liz to wait for 2 hours…

Once we arrived in Chicago, we were definitely late for our connection flight… And that’s when the craziness REALLY began… As we walked to the Customer Service desk, I glanced at the Arrival/Departure screens to see if any other flights were going to London-Heathrow. No…no Heathrow flights… Then I passed one screen that showed a Heathrow flight leaving at 10:40pm (It was currently about 9:40…), and I got really hopeful! Of course, the screen next to it didn’t show that flight, so I triple-checked that I wasn’t seeing things… As we walked to the Customer Service desk, I told Liz that I thought I saw a 10:40 flight that we could probably catch.

We walked to the Customer Service desk to find a very LONG line of people…all who missed their connecting flights as well… Then a United Airlines staff lady made the wonderful announcement that the desk would be closing in 20 minutes, and that whoever was in line would just have to come back tomorrow. You can imagine all the yelling that ensued… people didn’t really like that idea too much… So yeah, lots of angry people, many of whom were now on the phone with United’s customer service. I was trying not to feel anxious, but I kept thinking about that 10:40 flight I saw, and how I so badly wanted us to get on that flight… I was thankful that Liz was calm and relaxed, and didn’t seem as anxious as I did…

Time continued to tick away, and although we got closer and closer to the front of the line, we were still about five people away from the front when the lady announced that they were closing AND that the people from the Austin flight would not be getting hotel vouchers because our flight delay was not due to mechanical problems…. Oh man… let me tell you, these travelers were NOT happy… We all kind of stood there wondering what to do, and one guy said someone told him that the baggage claim customer service was still open, so we all followed each other down there.

After waiting in line at Baggage Claim for a bit longer, I glanced over at the clock to realize that my dream of catching the 10:40 flight to Heathrow was pretty much impossible at this point…(It was 10:38…) So now, I just awaited to hear what crazy flight changes we would have to make…

Finally, we got to the counter, and thankfully had a really nice man helping us. (Up to this point, between the Austin lady, our cranky flight attendant, and the CS lady upstairs, I wasn’t too impressed by the United Airlines staff…) The man had a cool accent, and as I tried to figure out where he was from, I began getting excited again about our trip, and all the various cultures and people we’ll come across… He gave us our new flight change, which is actually better than our original one… and we got a hotel voucher and a meal voucher.

Now, I’m lying in a room at the lovely Westin hotel. It’s pretty nice… Liz and I ordered pizza last night ($21 for a medium sized pizza!!), and had a lovely night’s sleep in our comfortable “heavenly” beds. After reading Liz’s blog post from yesterday, I was reminded that yes, I need to rest and relax in order to really enjoy this trip and all that God has prepared for us. I’m generally a pretty laid back person, and I knew coming into this trip that I needed to be flexible, and I even expected to have some sort of flight craziness… but I think because it all started before we even left Austin, it just kind of threw me off…

But now, as I sit here thinking about having some leftover pizza for breakfast (mmmm!!!), I am thankful that I had one last night of “American comfort”…a comfy warm bed, some delicious pizza, even a cheesy chick-flick on our big widescreen TV.

For now, I leave you with the first photo of our trip…our lovely deep dish pizza.

Random Thoughts from Gate 23

So, we’re sitting at our gate at the airport in Austin. It was flashing Denver when we walked up instead of Chicago as it should have been. Apparently United is having some mechanical difficulties so our flight will be touching down in Chicago at exactly the moment we are supposed to be flying out to London, which of course will have a domino effect on the rest of our connections – London to Dubai to Entebbe – with maybe a little Ethiopia thrown in.

It looks like I may be getting one more hot shower.

I’m actually thrilled about this delay. I wanted to blog and email and make phone calls and you know…sleep… before we left. It looks like I will get to do all of that. Plus I can’t help but love the adventure and uncertainty – will we make any of our connections? Will Sophie’s Motel in Uganda sit empty for a night? Is this just preparation for all the delayed flights that are quite likely to come later in various languages and less familiar airports?

I guess if we’d called to check the status of our flight I could have finished my laundry and made my bed and finished the last few chapters of New Moon (the second in the Twilight series). It was just too large to pack, but maybe I should have brought it… our bags actually came in at 22 pounds each! We thought we’d really be pushing it with the 33 pound limit into Sudan, but it looks like we could have packed that extra soccer ball and candy after all.

I think a bat just flew by. You might think it was the effect of my imagination and all the vampire books I have been reading, but I’m pretty sure it was real. Of course, I am pretty tired and then there’s that headachy side effect I seem to be experiencing from my yellow fever vaccine.

Funny how much our perspective is affected by our humanness. It makes me think of a conversation I had with a friend once. He talked about how he desired to live in God’s reality (not just with the assurance that there is a God but in line with the reality He sees).

This morning a couple friends came over to pray with us (one all the way from Denton – thanks Lindsey!) As she was leaving, Ellen looked me in the eyes and said, “Rest, you have to rest so you can actually experience and enjoy each country.”

Those two exhortations come together for me now as I sit here at Gate 23. To live in the awareness of what is truly real and thereby see and enjoy more clearly and fully. I want to squeeze as much out of each experience as I possibly can, to be aware and present in each moment but I need Him whispering His perspective, the only real reality.

A lie is but for a moment…. I think that’s somewhere in Proverbs

It just flew by again. I think it’s actually a bird.