Journey Mercies.

In the past 2 weeks, Lindsey and I have had some rather ridiculous travel experiences.

On April 10th (Friday) we were supposed to fly from Philly to Atlanta, where we would connect to fly to Phoenix and stay at my mom's before driving to Tucson the following morning. We arrived at the airport at 5 for our 6 o'clock flight. I couldn't get the electronic check-in kiosk to work (I forgot that you can swipe your driver's license...) and got in line to check-in at the desk. After waiting for 15 minutes or so, we reach the desk. The guy checks us in right away, but says "You know, you can check-in at the kiosks." I was about to respond when he just about cuts me off and says, quite sternly, "You just wasted 10-15 minutes standing in line. Why don't you people ever listen to me!?" I was dumbfounded. He gave us our tickets and we left.

We got to the gate and there's all kinds of mess in Atlanta. Like, tornadoes and stuff. They have a complete ground stoppage. So after about 2 1/2 to 3 hours and exhausting many options, I work it out for us to get a flight to Cincinnati at 6am the following morning and then to Phoenix. Sweet. As we're walking away from the terminal, I realize I lost my fleece. I checked every place where we'd been sitting and the bathrooms. Nothing. It's gone. Great. We've been at the airport for like 4 hours and all we did was not leave and lose my fleece. Ugh.

We wake up at 3am and get to the airport around 3:45. We get to the gate and what's hanging over a seat by itself with no one around it? Yep. My fleece. It was ridiculous. We also bumped into some of my mom's friends so we got to fill them in on where we were going and stuff.

We land in Cincinnati and get to our next gate. We're told they've downsized the plane by 30 seats and that Lindsey and I are getting bumped and flying to Denver first. We were compensated with vouchers for $200 to Delta. On the way to Denver we met an awesome woman named Antoinette who was also a Christian. We had some cool and interesting talks with her. She grew up in a missionary family in Africa, cool stories.

After that it was pretty much smooth-sailing to Phoenix. We landed in Denver, ate lunch, and flew out. Flying back to Philly was uneventful (the good kind).

All that was ridiculous. But then, this past Monday I took a train to DC to meet Lindsey. About and hour north of Staunton we see break lights. Everything stops. This had just happened. Like, literally 5 minutes before. We stopped around 11:40 and did not leave from that spot until 5:30am. We sat still for 6 hours. It was absurd. We got to Lindsey's apartment at around 8am, 13 1/2 hours after she left to pick me up. Wow.

The cool part of all this is seeing what didn't happen to us because of all the ridiculous turns along the way. Like, if we'd flown to Atlanta, I'd never have gotten my fleece back. And if we hadn't been bumped to Denver, we'd have never gotten our vouchers (will will cover a flight in May to a friend's wedding...) and we would have never met Antoinette and has solid conversation.

My train leaving Philly the other night was like 10 minutes late. If it had been on time, we could have been in that wreck. Like, 3 people died in that huge wreck that made us sit there for 6 hours.

I'll take sitting still and sleeping uncomfortably in a car for 6 hours over dying in a fiery highway blaze any day.

God is good.