Jamaica 2010

Jamaica 2010

Have you ever had a set of plans that seemed flawless? Maybe you spent months toiling over your plan, studying it and perfecting it only to have something come along that shatters the entire plan. That seems to be what has happened to Kevin and me multiple times in the last three weeks.

From my last posting, you will understand part of our humbling experience.

The second part is related to our vacation. We had been planning what we thought was to be an amazing trip through Europe! We booked the vacation last October, and paid for the whole entire trip in full four months ago. The trip was to London, Paris, Switzerland, the French Riviera, Monaco, Florence, and Rome. Hours were spent at Borders studying books on these places, mapping out our top stops and eats in each city, and getting ridiculously excited. We even spent the day I had to get surgery thinking about how wonderful 'next week' would be as we ventured through the streets of Paris, toured the Coliseum where Paul preached, overlooked the Swiss Alps, and on and on.

The night before we were to fly out of Chicago into London, we got a 1-800 call in the middle of the night. I was pissed that some salesperson was calling at 2am...but in the morning we listened to the message. It was American Airlines letting us know that our flight had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano that had been erupting for days. We found out later that over 100,000 flights had/have been cancelled because of this natural disaster. HOLY SMOKES!!

Once again, we were humbled at our small-ness and God's big-ness. Sometimes I pray, "God, make me small in my life and make yourself BIGGER." And oh man, has God been answering that prayer.

We spent a day toiling over where to go on our 2 weeks off of work. We looked at driving up the coast of California, we thought about Disney World, and we tried to find a cheap flight to Hawaii. We looked at probably as many websites as we had when we were looking for our Honeymoon destination. After literally 5 hours of searching on our own, we decided to call a travel agent. She helped us find a wonderful all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. It turned out to be a great trip with a lot of opportunities to share God's love. It was no Europe, but definitely a great place to enjoy our relationship, spend time with God on the beach, and get some good tan lines.

This last month has just gone to show that we are so much less in-control of our lives than we thought we were. This is a sinful, broken world that we live in, and even though we are Bible-believing Christians, we are not promised a life without struggle or pain. We have a new understanding of Grace, and we have a renewed closeness to the Lord.

He is a God of comfort, and Kevin and I both have never needed the arms of God around us like we do right now. It's a powerful thing, God's love. Phillipians 4 spoke straight to our hearts yesterday at church. "

What a crazy life this is. Praise God for his peace that surpasses our understanding.