There’s nothing like waiting.
– waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom so you can use it
– waiting for someone to finish eating so you can wash their dishes
– waiting for someone to stop talking so you can say your piece
– waiting for someone to bring toilet paper
– waiting for your period to be over
– waiting to grow up
– waiting to eat
– waiting for the next blow of punishment
– waiting for that letter or package to arrive
– waiting for the moment when that person opens the gift you got for them and seeing their face
– waiting for feelings to come so you can cry and let go of the ball in the pit of your stomach
– waiting in the checkout line in the grocery store
– waiting to get home after work so you can finally close your eyes and forget everything
– waiting for people to come
– waiting for people to go
– waiting for God to answer that prayer you keep repeating because He seems to be too distant in heart or body to answer….
– waiting in the airport for 4 days because you booked your “cheapest available” flight on the wrong day.
That’s where i found myself right before launch. And my stubbornness arrived to wait with me. I decided that i didn’t want to undo the saving money i’d bought the ticket for, so i picked a chair in the airport lobby and i sat there for 4 days.
This is the story of that wait:
I left my home of 3 months with my sister Monday and stayed overnight at my Aunts. It was really nice to be able to have some time with them before i left for the year. Early the next morning i was treated to a gourmet meal since they very conveniently live close to the airporter that would take me straight to my plane; and we milked every moment.
On the way to the airport i realized my first loss of my journey: the waterbottle my pastor in Korea had given me got left behind in my aunts fridge 🙁
I arrived early enough to wait another hour for my plane check in and made some friends in line, which was nice, and slept on my bag.
World Race preparation!
As my team keeps joking, you know youre a world racer when….(fill in the rest with your current situation) you sleep on your bag while waiting in line at the airport!
Since the flight was domestic the plane was basically stripped down to bucket seats and $5 bags of pretzel snacks. I mostly slept/ talked with the Ethiopian i’d met while waiting for our plane in the concourse.
When he heard that i was going to Ethiopia this year he excitedly shared with me about his country, customs, and a few words he thought i might find useful. “I’m so fortunate!” he said when I got on the plane and found myself sitting next to him. This was my second encounter with someone from Ethiopia that blessed me.
When we arrived in Atlanta, i quickly got my bag from baggage claim and then went to the atrium under the main dome where i’d waited before going to and returning from training camp. I found my seat and set up camp: pulled my bags close and went to sleep on them with a prayer on my lips; “Lord, I’m here! What do you want to do with me? I’m available…”
It was pretty cold at night, so i mostly slept during the day. During the night i ended up talking with other people who were waiting for early morning flights.
I had two meals while there. On the second day i bought a fish sandwich meal from Burger King and saved the 25cent refillable cup. The next day around the same time i bought a garden salad from Popeyes and refilled the cup. The next day someone gave me food….Then it was time to go to our meeting place so i took the food given to me with me…
My first night im pretty sure i just slept through…and a guy joined a chair near me who i learned the next morning had recently broken up with his third wife and she’d apparently put all his stuff in the street and lit it. On fire.
He claimed to be a christian youth worker back in the day and i prayed for him…but he couldn’t stay still and kept leaping up and later coming back…and i wondered if he was on some drugs….
A few times he came back with luggage – which he dug through and seemed disappointed about. And then the luggage mysteriously disappeared….
When i asked him about it he claimed someone had asked him to watch it while they went to the bathroom, which seemed sketchy since i hadn’t been too asleep that i didn’t notice him digging through it, with furtive glances, and that later he was wearing different clothes, and that he rolled off with it in the direction of baggage claim which is where i believe he brought it from. He also had no luggage when he first came because he claimed he took the train there to meet a friend who would help him out.
I was grateful that 1.he soon after left after a day and a half, and 2. that he’d never directly asked me for money, although i would have bought him some food if he had asked me for money.
I decided during the second day to spent time reading the two books I’d brought with me so that I could finish them and mail them home; thus making my bags lighter.
I spent time reading and sleeping.
The next time i woke up there was an Asian guy who asked to sitting next to me and i heartily welcomed him. It was almost getting to be night again so i decided to eat.
We soon stuck up a conversation and he told me that he was a member of the communist party and about his life in China and the states. We talked about God and life and theology all the way till 6am when he had to go board his flight. “I will read it!” he said. He thanked me, pushed the bible into his bag and waved goodbye with a smile.
That encounter made me so excited about the ways God can use simple interactions – but I was pretty tired.
Soon after I was asleep again.
When I woke I started reading again.
Throughout the day I had a steady stream of people approach and ask me to sit beside me which was weird because there were other chairs all over the place that were empty and available. I decided that God was taking me up on my invitation to do with my time what He wanted, so I ended up speaking with them about life and God and praying for some of them.
One of these people was a young man who was from Atlanta on his way to see his girlfriend in Texas. He was beside himself because he’d missed his plane and had kept deferring his trip – until he’d finally gotten the plane he’d just missed. “I can’t believe this!” he kept saying. He told me he missed his plane because he overestimated his time and went and got a haircut.
I couldn’t help laughing – but apparently his girlfriend wasn’t going to find it funny – so we prayed over his situation and he told me that he felt peace come over him. While he waited on the phone to try and rebook his flight we talked about life, God, his family, and his situation. He told me his Dad was a local pastor and he confessed to wanting to live all out for God.
An hour later he was able to celebrate with me as the airline company on the phone booked him an immediate flight replacement they’d earlier told him would be impossible!
It was so exciting to see God answer so quickly and see the young man confess to greater faith in God in his life.
It was awesome to wave goodbye to a brother in Christ being mutually encouraged.
….
A few times during the four days I asked whoever was sitting with me to watch my bags while I visited the bathroom, otherwise I just sat there, read, slept, and talked with people.
The third evening a man from Argentina sat next to me and an airport employee asked me if I would be there to help him out if I could. I agreed since I found out he didn’t know any English. We had many moments of body language laughter during the rest of the evening as first I helped him get food, and later get internet so that he could let his family know that his plane had been cancelled and that he’d be arriving at a different time. I even got to facetime his family …which was also a laughter affair as none of us knew what the other said beside “yes”, “thank you”, “youre welcome”, and “I don’t understand” – which was the extent of the Spanish I could remember.
It was a special moment when someone came to fetch him in the morning to take him to his flight. We hugged and I’m pretty sure he invited me to visit his family when I visited Argentina.
Right after that at 4am, an older lady who’d been resting nearbye, asked to sit with me. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help listening to your conversations!” she said.
Apparently she’d been listening since earlier in the day when I prayed with the guy about missing his plane. We ended up talking about our love for watching people and writing and some about what I was reading and planning to do this next year.
I found out that she, like me, was waiting in the airport for a few days till her cheap plane sunday – wanting to save on hotel fare. She was in Atlanta for a church retreat conference that she’d just attended.
I continued to read and sleep and talk with her until the last morning before my group would arrive.
The last morning I woke up and a dad and young daughter asked to sit with me – and the sweet little girl and I played and talked and did her reading homework for several hours while her dad checked in with his wife and worked on stuff while they waited for their plane to New York to visit the grandmother.
Before they left to board their plane the Dad profusely thanked me for helping him out with getting her homework done and befriending his daughter. We talked a bit about life and God and he blessed my trip. Then he gave me some food he’d prepared for that morning but hadn’t ended up being hungry enough to eat. “If you’d accept it, I didn’t eat out of it!” he said.
I took this as a sign of God’s provision and gratefully took it.
It became my food for the next day. And was SO SO GOOD!
After that a lady on the way to her 10th highschool reunion came by and around that time I finished my books and went off to look for a mailing center, which I came to find out had just moved out of the airport.
When I returned and told my chair mates, the girl going to her h.s. reunion offered to mail them home for me. How could I refuse? Again I felt God reaching out to provide for me.
Soon after my teammates started to arrive and I left to head off to our launch meeting spot.
So that’s my airport story.
It’s been a few weeks and I feel that I’ll have to come back and write it more detailed and interesting because it seems a little flat. Sorry about that – but hope you get a better picture of how my journey started!
AND about how with God – there is NO WASTED TIMES!
So take a step of courage and ask Him to use your waiting moments.
More next time 😀
