"I'd Like a Heaping Helping of Faith Please"

Today I was supposed to leave for Bolivia.

And to my surprise and dismay, that didn't happen.

Here is what DID happen today:

My parents and I arrived at the airport (they wanted to stay with me as long as they could to make sure everything went alright), we found a kiosk to check in and print out my boarding pass...error message. Says to talk to attendant. OK. Woman comes over. Swipes my passport through the machine, then looks at my passport. (After Ethiopia a year ago January I had accidentally thrown it in the wash, since I had stuck it in the pocket of my sweatpants, so the pages were bent and curled...but I've kept it clipped together all around in order to straighten it out, and my mom MADE SURE my passport was OK by checking at the passport agency. They said it was fine. Everything was still readable.  My Bolivian Visa was also put in my passport and God only knows what it took to finally get my Visa 5 days before my flight.)

BUT, this lady said I probably won't be able to fly with my passport like that. !!! So, she talks to the supervisor, comes back, and confirms that no, it's against regulations to let me fly on American Airlines with my passport like that. My parents and I are freaking out, I start crying, my dad keeps saying (pretty loudly :) ) over and over "This is UNBELIEVABLE!" We're explaining to the supervisor that we checked at the agency and they said it was fine, that it went through the Bolivian consulate and it was fine, yet she would not let us go. The problem was not with the slightly curled pages but with a piece of paper attached to the back cover that was just beginning to come off at the edges. COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS.

So, in this chaos, my mom says "What if we had glued it down before we came? Would there be a problem?" And the supervisor says something like "What you do in your home I don't know about" (Basically, "Don't ask, don't tell"). So, ironically, I have glue with me. Glue sticks and glue bottles actually because I'm bringing with me a ton of school supplies. (God has a sense of humor, no doubt.)  So we go over where they can't see us and I take a glue stick out of the package and my mom and I work together to glue down this stupid page attached to the back cover of my passport, making sure we get everywhere and that it's stuck down well.

So we go back to the kiosk, get an error message again for some reason (maybe because the page I'm sliding through isn't perfectly flat), and THANKFULLY another lady is there who is an ANGEL (ha) and doesn't say anything about my passport when she slides it through, validates the check in, and even doesn't say a word when I check my bags and one weighs 51 lbs. Meanwhile, we are trying to avoid seeing these stickler ladies who had stopped us (especially my dad who is wearing a bright red shirt), so after I check my bags and get in the security line with my mom, he gets far away. My mom and I are still shaking/stressed after all of this, she finally has to leave me with a quick goodbye, and I never really said goodbye to my dad.

So THEN, my carry-on suitcase has to get searched in security because they're suspicious with my tons of school supplies, which holds me up for my plane to Miami that I have to now quickly catch after the crazy fiasco that just happened. I quickly go to my gate where I see Bekah (my future roommate and flightmate whose face I just know from Facebook), and I was SO happy to see her. She was in line just about to board the plane so I jumped in with her and we boarded.

Sitting down on the plane, finally feeling like I could kind of breathe a sigh of relief, yet knowing I still had so much more to go through that day, I began to listen to some relaxing Bon Iver and journal. I began thinking about how that must've been Satan's final (hopefully final) attempt at trying to stop me from going and discourage me. And praising God for all the little blessings he provided (my parents being there, glue--though I don't know it ultimately mattered, it was pretty funny, meeting Bekah just as she was about to board) and of course the huge blessing that I had gotten on that plane. The whole ordeal made me realize (once again), I have no control over these things. I had just told God that I had faith in Him, and then, it was tested again. It was almost like a "Do you really or are you just saying that?"

Because we sat on that plane, on the ground, for 2 hours. They said it was a technical problem--something with an emergency light not coming on. They told us that when I first got on but I was sure it would leave. I was SURE of it. I had faith. When an hour went by, I didn't have as much faith. And I felt like I lost all hope and faith, like someone had punched me in the gut, when the plane was declared "out of service" and everyone had to leave. ARE YOU KIDDING ME GOD?! Do you not want me to go?!? With everything that happened that day, I was seriously doubting it.

So, we get off the plane. I am feeling totally helpless. Totally faithless. Feeling quite numb but feeling a good cry was needed. And Bekah, bless her heart, helped me tremendously just through her attitude in all of this. I eventually realized, this was not the end of the world. We'd still make it there eventually. We're at O'Hare in Chicago and my parents can pick us up and she can stay with me for however long we need to. It was craziness rebooking our flight and getting them to pull our luggage from the plane that it was going into (we'd miss our connection flight to La Paz if we had waited and took the next flight), but we got home eventually. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which tasted so good after not eating for about 9 hours. And we both took 3 hour long naps. Then we ate dinner with my parents and my brother, drank some wine (wine is very good for days like today), rented a couple movies, had ice cream and watched one of them, and now here I am....needing to get all of this out. Oh, and it is my birthday as of a couple hours ago!...Don't know what Bekah, my family and I will do for it tomorrow, but hoping it's a good and RESTFUL day!

~~~

I've realized I always like to know the "Why's" of things...I'm an analyzer. And stuff like today frustrates me because I don't know why it happened. And I can speculate all I want and try to figure out the supernatural (God vs. Satan) and what I don't have control over and don't understand, or I can choose to be OK with not knowing why and trusting that God will turn this all into good. And I see the good. More time at home without frantically packing, more time for processing, time getting to know Bekah and process things with her before we jump into this new adventure, more time for rest, and REAL goodbyes with my parents. It sucks not being there, but I'm glad Bekah's with me in being a "latecomer." And this verse is playing in my head now (actually, a sing-a-long version I think I learned through AWANA tapes... :) )

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28