Write When You Get the Chance

So it is the night before a trip to North Carolina to celebrate Abby's fourth birthday,  and I am awake.  I have been trying to sleep.  But that doesn't look like it is happening tonight.  So writing is my usual solution.  A trip pending and I am thinking of changes that are pending.  I have little wisdom on the why or the wherefore's that feed change.  But this is a season of change...changes in buildings, changes in approach, changes in me.  Maybe God just wants to keep the trip interesting from here to Kingdom come.  I am open to that.


To make this trip interesting...there is a how to that I am still working on.  


I can honestly say it has been an interesting trip so far on the road to kingdom come and also on my road trip to North Carolina.   I am not sure how it happened but I found myself in the car with two great ladies and two little girls. It was a blessed trip, no major wrong turns and no mishaps along the road. It did give me time to think as the miles ticked away.


 In a season of change how do I approach the changes?  Do I run the other way?  Do I embrace them and hope for the best?  Do I see them as from Your hand, Lord Jesus?  Quite honesty, there are times when I have the ticket bought in my head and I am all but down the road.  There is cleanness to life on the road...after all the trunk is only so big.  What was that sermon series I just preached..."Getting the Junk Out of the Trunk?"  Ok...I get it.


First thought on handling change: don't run from it will only catch up with you later.  I speak from experience on this one. I have tried to out run change and it is inevitable.  It will catch up at the most inconvenient times.  The best that I can do is to try and imitate Maddy at times and just smile with all my might.  It is a better view of  what is coming at me anyway right, Lord?  Hold on and face the change with hope.


Second thought on change: expect the unexpected.  On the way home I think that my GPS had a bit of a mood disorder.  It just kept wanting to recalculate right in the middle of Washington.  I am not sure why.  I didn't even make a wrong turn.  It just kept recalculating in a British accent that I gave it just for a bit of humor.  


So on a trip when I did not expect to see any of the sites of Washington D.C. at all, we drove right by the Washington Monument.  It was unexpected and unplanned.  Does unplanned for mean a mistake?  Sometimes...and sometimes not.  Life happens on the way to life sometimes...so my default response at this point needs to be to embrace it, celebrate the memory.  Who knows the next time I will see this stone symbolic of a hero long dead. 


That brings me to lunch.  In the middle of change don't forget the basics.  Lunch is an essential.  Two little ones in the back seat tend to focus you on the elemental things of life...hungry, angry, lonely, tired...where have I heard that before....


So in the middle of change, Lord I promise I am going to take breaks...breathers....time to smile at a joke, eat a bit of food, smile like it meant something other than facial exercise.  Hope is something that well loved children don't really have to work on it just happens.  There is running that is usually associated with hope and light with little ones, at least the little girls that I have spent the journey with lately.  


Did I mention the giggles...there should be lots of time for giggles along the road to Kingdom come.  Change continues to be right in front of me, a verse keeps circling around in my head.  

James 1:17
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow

So that is the way I am choosing to look at change...as a gift coming from a Father who has my best in mind.