Coffee and Fumes

We touched down in our city and Lucy woke up and started screaming.  She hadn’t slept enough in the 40 hours of travel and didn’t want to be in that seat buckle.  It was a bit of deja vu because that’s how the flight started, too.  After we pulled up at the gate, Chris and I took a deep breath and woke up the boys.  They weren’t so thrilled.  They proceeded to whine and cry that they were too tired and their legs hurt too much to walk out of the plane and out of the terminal.  Meanwhile, Chris and I picked up our 6 carry-ons and crying Lucy and started walking -- hoping the boys would follow somehow.

After we got through the airport, we had to walk to pick up a taxi.  I was pushing a cart with one hand and carrying a now sleeping Lucy in the other.  Abe and Jed were following behind, crying and screaming.  Everyone at the airport was having a great time staring at us and laughing at my poor, exhausted kids.  As we tried to cross the street, a police truck pulled out and started honking.  What was I to do?  I couldn’t turn the cart with one hand and I couldn’t move my grumpy boys any faster.  The police just had to wait.  Finally, we sat down in the taxi and all three kids promptly fell asleep.  Whew!

As we drove through the city, I was fighting exhaustion and frustration.  Really, most of the trip hadn’t been too bad, but the last 3 hours pretty much made up for it.  As I looked around, though, I saw the remains of our city -- still fighting back from the flooding last fall.  So many shops still weren’t open.  So many roads were being fixed.  So many buildings had bad damage.  Maybe a few grumpy kids and 4 hours of sleep in 2 days wasn’t such a big deal after all.

Then, we arrived to our house.  As we pulled up the drive, we saw our friends waiting at the step for us.  They’d arrived before us and, though they were getting ready for a month-long trip themselves, they’d picked up our big luggage from cargo, come over to our house, put up our trampoline and a swingset, and stocked our pantry and fridge!  There were even pizzas on our table.  Also, my house had been cleaned and organized by some other friends in the city.  I had left in a tizzy with dirty beds thrown together and things ‘good-enough’.  I returned to clean sheets, clean floors, fixed plumbing, and even a hand-mixer and pot holders -- things I’d never gotten around to purchasing during the chaos of last year.  I sat down and cried.

God sure knows how and when to surprise us.  He knows when to remind us that He’s there.  He knows our hearts and our limits and fills in the gaps.  God sure is good.

As I push through the next days of jet-lag, I need to remember this.  It gets fuzzy in the blur of getting up with the kids 10 times in one night, or trying to find homes for everything that was in our suitcases, or pushing through the 3 pm exhaustion, or keeping my cool with whiny kids who just need more sleep.  It will come.  And I’m strangely optimistic as I look ahead to our impossible schedule and daunting circumstances.  Maybe it’s just the extra cup of coffee this morning.  Or maybe it’s the knowledge of Him who called us.