Planes, trains and automobiles. Crowds, chaos and claustrophobia.
Long trips always cause me to wonder, “Is where I’m going worth what it’s taking to get there?”
My husband and I recently journeyed out to the San Francisco area to visit our son, his wife and their adorable baby. (I checked—it’s not tacky to call one’s grandchild “adorable,” especially when it is so TRUE.)
It was a daunting trip for this homebody.
My nerves were shot before we even got to the Atlanta airport. I’m no longer used to six lanes of kamikaze craziness with everyone driving like bats out of you-know-where.
After surviving that I-85 insanity and parking in Outer Mongolia, we dragged our luggage through the Atlanta airport and merged with the teeming masses of hurried, harried travelers rushing to escalators, bathrooms, trains, security checkpoints, and departure gates.
I felt like an old heifer in a cattle drive.
We eventually boarded our plane and I wedged myself in a seat between my husband and a young man who was obviously hoping to avoid human interaction.
Not wanting to be the dreaded over-chatty seatmate, I suppressed all my naturally curious compulsions to ask this hibernating guy a bazillion questions about where he’d come from and where he was going.
But I did silently pray for him because I wondered if he had anyone else in his life praying for him. Lots of people don’t.
Praying helped distract me from the misery of being stuck in that cramped airplane seat. I’ve thankfully never been in a body cast, but I’m guessing it’s a similar feeling. Not being able to move always overwhelms me with a desire to move.
I welcomed distractions—a good book to read, a downloaded movie to watch on my iPad—but not the kind of distraction I got when one of the flight attendants began flirting with my husband.
That would have been disturbing enough if the attendant had been a female, but he wasn’t.
I’m not making this up—even my normally oblivious hubby noticed the very over-the-top, uncomfortable attention this guy was giving him. When the steward actually WINKED at Joe, we knew for sure that, no sirree, we weren’t in Abbeville anymore.
“Could anything be worth this?” I asked myself for at least the ninth time since leaving home that morning.
But my thoughts went immediately to that squeezable, kissable grandbaby and her beloved parents waiting for us in California, and I thought, “Yep, it’s gonna be worth it.”
We landed, made our way through the San Francisco airport, got our rental car, survived rush hour on a freeway, and found our son’s apartment in Mountain View, birthplace of Silicon Valley’s tech-company gold rush.
And there they were, out in the yard waving us down—the little family that made the journey worth every single hassle. One glimpse of them and my travel stress melted away.
I recognize a transcending truth here.
Jesus promised that for those who believe in Him, all the pain and hassles of this life will be worth it when our journeys are over.
I confess that when things have gotten hard, I’ve sometimes wondered, “Is where I’m going worth what it’s taking to get there?”
But deep down in my spirit, I know it has been, it is, and it will be.
The Bible calls our short journey on earth a “vapor” (James 4:14 )—like a quick blast from a can of hairspray.
When it’s over, will we feel like it’s been worth it? If we know Jesus, oh yes.
“But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’”– 1 Corinthians 2:9 (NKJV)