Freak Out or Trust

We started to hear rumblings of a possible strike a week before I traveled.  The pilots were unhappy and would strike if the company did not meet their demands.  But travel from the islands is complicated.  It takes multiple days.  First you have to fly from our island (Clove Island) to the big island. Then you spend a night on the big island and fly out the next day, because there are usually no connecting same day flights.  That’s the normal way of things. 

Tom & our daughter reunited

So I had already flown to the Big Island when word came out that the pilots had gone on strike.

This is the moment to freak out.  Or at least that’s what something inside us tells us.  But if we’ve learned anything from living on the islands, we’ve learned to be more flexible.  In fact, we’ve learned that these are opportunities for spiritual growth.  So we try to swallow that impulse to freak out because the other option is to trust. Who is in control?  Who holds all things in His hands?  Who knew there would be a pilot strike?  Who will make a way for us?  So I took some deep breaths, tried to remember these truths and proceeded with plan B.

Plan B was to wait for the airline to put us on alternative flights, and since my flight was no longer leaving Sunday morning, I might as well go and join the fellowship of my brothers and sisters on the big island.  So I did, and it was great.  But after the gathering, I had a message on my phone.  The airline wanted to put us on a flight with another airline, routing through another city in a more distant country than my destination and arriving the next day at 2am—yuck!

Our boys moved up karate belts!

There was another airline that had a flight out and a much nicer schedule, arriving in the evening, not the middle of the night.  Unfortunately, the two airlines don’t work with one another.  It would mean getting reimbursed for the one ticket and buying another.  My teammate was on the same flight as me, so we talked about what to do and agreed to try to get on the other flight.  I said a quick prayer and went about buying the ticket.

As soon as I bought the ticket, I received a text that the airline I had just booked tickets with minutes before had had a crash that day.  Time to freak out, right?  More deeps breaths.  There was little I could do about it now.  The tickets had been bought.  An airline that has just had a crash will probably be extra careful after that, right?  So maybe we would actually be safer—assuming the airline kept flying…but I had no control over that.  All I could do was wait and see if the airline would still be flying the next day.  So I prayed—for patience, peace, and for the airline to still be running the next day, and then went about the rest of the day visiting and enjoying unexpected time with colleagues from the big island.  I’m not saying I did all this without any worry in my heart, but I tried to remind myself, when worry came, that my Father’s got this.

I am not trying to paint myself as a perfect saint in all this—it was exercise in trust (needed practice in strengthening those trust muscles).  In some ways the Father went easy on me, one thing that made it all a whole lot easier was that I was traveling without Megan and the kids.  It’s easier to trust and to roll with things when you don’t have to worry about feeding a family or about 5 people’s bags.  That would have been a lot more stressed.  It was a sign, actually, that our Father was in control.  Megan and I had considered going to this conference as a family—strongly considered it—but in the end had decided it was best just for me to go.  So there was provision in that too.

Tom's airport meal

Opportunities to trust in His provision continued.  Though I had bought the plane tickets and it was confirmed that the purchase had gone through, I had yet to receive the actual tickets to my email.  So my teammate and I arrived at the airport the next morning, without tickets and not knowing if there would be any flight at all.  But as we waited for the check-in counter to open, our tickets arrived to my inbox and the plane arrived on the tarmac.  In a few hours we were in the air and on our way.

The rest of the trip was more or less uneventful.  It did include a 7 hour layover that became a 9 hour layover in an airport that had no dining facilities. (I had a soda and potato chips for dinner—that was all that was available.)  But we eventually arrived at our destination, tired and thankful, and for the most part—without freaking out.  God is good.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Megan and our son are feeling better.  There was a gathering to give condolences to Elewa for the death of her sister. It was a time of prayer and sharing words and passages of encouragement. The grief is still painful but we are thankful for Elewa staying grounded in the Father. We’re thankful for the conference that Tom was able to attend and that almost all participants were able to make it eventually despite the strike. We are thankful that Tom was able to spend two nights at our daughter’s school and have all day Saturday with her. We’re thankful that flights started back up before Tom’s return flight and he made it back home to Clove Island today!


PRAYERS REQUESTED
The weather is heating up on the islands— pray for our team’s energy as we go into hot season, that we’d know when to rest and have relief in the form of rain and fans when we need it. Pray for our two teammates going to the French Island for the first time at the end of the week— they will be helping with the orientation of new short-termers there. Pray for an uneventful boat trip, that they could be helpful and have fun, and that they would have new insights into how to pray for the French Island. Pray that the short-termers would be inspired to long-term work. Our daughter is going into the end of her first term of high school, including the stress of final exams. Pray that she can study well and not be too stressed.