Have you ever had travel go bad? Had your best-laid plans gone awry because of detours, car trouble or an airport snafu? During a recent trip to a writers’ conference, we experienced this to the hilt.
On the morning of our flight to Austin, we woke up with the looming excitement of big plans. We had our meals for the next 24 hours planned around Carly’s favorite restaurant in Dallas and a BBQ dive we’d heard was amazing, and seeing as BBQ is one of our favorite parts about traveling, we were excited to hit the road. Our day started with an inch or two of snow on the ground, but we arrived at the airport in time. Our flight boarded as scheduled, de-iced and started down the runway for take off.
Have you ever been asleep during an aborted take off? It’s jolting to say the least. I woke when the engines had been shut down suddenly as the plane had been hurling down the runway. As an engineer, I had plenty of worst case scenarios going through my head, but thankfully it was only a maintenance issue that required us to return to the terminal.
At that point, we embarked on a four hour roller coaster process of rebooking a flight to Austin with a layover in Charlotte, which meant our meal plans were cancelled and we would have to spend the night at the Charlotte airport. Then we cancelled that flight, because our original plane had been repaired, and the flight to Dallas was back on.
Wait…where are we going?
This time we took off with no problems, and arrived in Dallas to find out we were numbers 13 and 14 on a standby list for the next flight to Austin. Nobody from the standby list even made that flight. George, our gate agent at C11, had sent everyone on to the next Austin gate to be on standby again for the next flight.
You could tell George had not been having the best of days. We’d already witnessed several dissatisfied, disgruntled, and disappointed customers interacting with him. We warily approached the desk to see if we had a miraculous shot at getting on the next flight. George quickly gave us the standard answer of “head to the next gate”, to which we gently pressed him to see if we could get on the following flight. Joking with him that it looked like he had been having a crazy day and how people respond, he started to ease up a bit. He looked up the flights for us, and told us it didn’t look good until sometime the next day.
Cue another change of plans. We decided to rent a car and drive to Austin instead of flying. With a simple three-hour drive, this seemed like the best option.
Since we were on our own schedule at that point, we were able to call up a dear friend in Dallas and eat at an In and Out Burger. We were also able to visit in the car with each other in a way that doesn’t occur in an airport or an airplane. We even squeezed in our dinner date, and we were able to get a full nights sleep before our conference.
Doesn’t life sometimes feel like this roller coaster day? You will have a picture of how your life will turn out when a curveball comes your way that changes everything and creates a very different life than you’d anticipated. For me, the curveball was an explosion at work. For you, that curveball might be something different. Regardless of what unexpected forces have changed your life, here’s what I learned on our crazy travel day, and what I’ve learned as I’ve walked through life as I didn’t expect it:
1. How you handle the unexpected influences the people around you.
When life takes an unexpected turn, you can either take out your fear and frustration on others, or invite them into your situation. Being honest and letting the people closest to you speak into your circumstance is something that I’ve found brings healing.
2. Unforeseen trials expose your true priorities.
When something you want is taken away, you realize how much you actually wanted it. You realize how much you were relying on that one thing. When I lost much of my physical ability, I realized how much I had to rely on God’s strength when I didn’t have any of my own. When our travel plans changed, we realized just how much stock we’d put into the plans we’d made. Trials remind us of how much we need God and how little we need other things.
3. God’s plan is always better, even when you can’t see it in the moment.
My son once asked me if I would take back the accident if given the opportunity. I said no. I told him that this has made me into who I am today, and that God has shaped our family in incredibly difficult but amazing ways because of it. I never would have written this story on my own, but luckily I’m not the author here. God’s plan for my life has resulted in so much more than my own plan ever could have.
Walking through a change of plans is never easy, even if the change isn’t a big one. But I’ve found that there is purpose behind every season, both good and bad, and that there are lessons to be learned from the curveballs life throws at you.
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