I had just hit “End Call” on my iPhone. A 30-minute FaceTime conversation with my dad was the perfect ending to a refreshing weekend spent with my whole squad. I glanced across the coffee shop to my two teammates, both finishing up some last minute emails, blog posts, and convos with friends. I looked down at my watch. It was 11 o’clock. We still had 2 hours until our bus left Chiang Mai. That gave us about 30 minutes until our taxi would be at our hostel to take us to the bus station. (We were told to give ourselves at least an hour for traffic.) I got up to pay for our drinks, a mere $3.52 for all three of us. As I put my change back in my wallet, I heard someone yell my name. Looking up, I saw my squad leader, Nikki, running into the cafe.
“You have to go now!” she said, half out of breath. “You’re leaving at 11:45!”
“We know,” I said, slightly confused as to why she was so exasperated. “We were already planning to leave at 11:30. So…we will be ready. We still have time to…”
“No! Your BUS leaves at 11:45, not 1:00. There was a mix up. Your taxi is already at the hostel to take you to the station. If you want to make it in time, you have to leave RIGHT NOW!”
Frantic, we gathered our things and bolted out of the cafe. We ran down the street, into the hostel, up four flights of stairs, passing some of our guys along the way, who were already taking our big packs down to load up into the taxi. Throwing the last of our things into our day packs, we hurried back downstairs. We took a couple seconds to get in some final goodbyes and see-you-laters before hopping into our taxi and making our way to the station. It was 11:15…
We said a simple prayer, “God, if this is the bus we are supposed to be on, let us get there in time.”
It’s now 1:15. I’m sitting on our bus, eating a pineapple muffin. The Thai landscape whizzing past me out my window.
It’s funny. I feel like this shouldn’t have been possible. Basic math tells me that. In addition (pun intended), we had three confirmations that the tickets purchased for us were for the one o’clock bus. We had calculated (haha) plenty of time to get to the bus station. We had dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s. We had our bases covered. But for all our preparation, our plans didn’t even happen.
It’s the start of Month 6. Each month has certainly come with its own unique challenges, adventures, struggles, and lessons-learned. This month is proving to be no exception. I can already see a theme forming:
Trust Me. Everything happens for a reason.
Reality: it’s something I have been taught my whole life to know, but there are still times in life I find it to be a struggle to fully believe and accept.
I get this a silly situation in the grand scheme of life. However as I sit here writing all this out, I can’t help but think of a deeper meaning: How would it look if we believed that everything in life happened for a reason? Would it look any different at all than if we believed everything was mere coincidence? Would we see effects of the differing viewpoints in how we approached day-to-day life? Would we act/think/feel differently? I mean, let’s be honest, is there really any significant difference at all between seeing it as a mis-communicated bus schedule versus some divine intervention, saving us from a tragedy that might have happened along the road? Does our perception of a situation really have that profound of an effect on our lives?
Personally, I think it does. I definitely see the good in coincidences. But, I also see how much more of an impact is made when something is intentional. For example: the feeling you get when a random stranger hands you a flower as a random act of kindness is super awesome! But can you really compare that feeling to the one you get when Someone that loves you, that has sought after you, pursued you, has made a point to get to know you (what your favorite flower is, what your favorite color is, etc.), goes out of His way to spend His time finding and buying the perfect flower just for you and then hands it to you and says, “I got this just for you”?
The first feeling makes me smile (a whole, whole lot). But the latter…the latter sparks something in my soul. In silence, the latter screams out:
“I love you.”
“You are so worth it.”
“I did this for you just so I could see you smile.”
I can’t tell you without having faith that the one viewpoint is more accurate than the other. I could provide you with evidence for both. I could easily argue both sides. But whether consciously or not, aren’t we are all believing it’s either one or the other?
For me, I want to believe the latter. I want to believe that there is something bigger happening around me. It doesn’t make me any more right. It doesn’t make me any more wrong. What it is doing is taking me from standing at a fork in the road to running as fast, as hard, as I can down a path I know I want to go. And by having this faith, I find myself believing, at the same time, that there is Someone running alongside me, encouraging me every step of the way. I’m quickly finding that what started out as a shift in my perspective towards one particular type of situation is taking over my whole life, permeating every aspect of it, overwhelming me, consuming me, and filling me with Life.
The spark started in my soul is turning into a bonfire.
