untangling the tangled messes of life
On Sunday after the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids had ended, my daughter and I were going to be joined by our husbands for a few days at our Lake Michigan cottage. Dave had flown in on Saturday night, but Meredith’s husband Ben had to take a red-eye and was due to arrive at 11:00 on Sunday morning. Traveling through O’Hare in Chicago is always tricky, and we learned Sunday morning that his flight had been four hours delayed. We started considering all sorts of options: have Ben rent a car and drive around the lake, have him take a train to Holland, Michigan, have Meredith drive Dave and me to our lake house, one and a half hours away, and then drive back to pick him up at the Grand Rapids airport. All options were pricey or had serious time implications. In the end Ben opted to rebook on an earlier flight. It wouldn’t arrive that much sooner than his original ETA, but it was certain to leave, while his original flight might not leave at all.
Mer and Dave and I would all wait in Grand Rapids to pick Ben up. But this created a new challenge…where to wait. We needed to check out of our hotel. Meredith and Dave wanted a place to write. Libraries were closed on Sunday, so Meredith suggested a coffee shop that seemed like it wasn’t too busy, allowing us to spread out to three tables.
At one point a little older lady came in and was trying to drag a chair to another empty table; I offered an empty chair from my table and moved it to hers. Soon another woman came in to say hello to her, and as this second woman turned to go, Meredith recognized her. She was a friend of ours from our summer community who lives full time in Grand Rapids. I ran after her as she started out the door, and we had a nice time catching up on our children and grands. Her husband came looking for her, and he and Dave chatted for a while as well.
If Ben hadn’t been delayed, if we hadn’t needed a location to kill an hour, we never would have converged on this particular coffee shop. I had just been reading a scene in a novel where two main characters pass each other in the same doctor’s office at the same time. In a city like New York, the setting of the book, I considered this plot point pretty far-fetched. That would never happen, right?
Then it happened to me.
When life gets all tangled up and it seems like everything is unmanageable and inconvenient, it might be wise to keep your eyes peeled. God just may have another plan. “Be responsive to the moment”, says the Lord. For “many are the plans of a man, but it is the purpose of God that will stand.”
Love, Liz
“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:17
