the best worst place

The girls officially changed their stance on being most excited about the airport and airline travel.

What a day, what a day.

Blogging has shaped me into a person who experiences life already asking, what is He allowing this moment for? Where is He in this, right now? How can I go through this for the sharing of His glory?

Even if I were never to write again, that has to be a good habit, searching for Him, learning from life, on purpose, even as it is happening.

the day, before absolutely everything that could went wrong :)

The girls were up at 5 am, unable to wait anymore. After a busy morning, we made our rounds of good-byes (everyone asking for the same thing...more on that this weekend), sat and prayed with a very tearful Micheline and said goodbye as best we could, and headed to the airport around 11.

Airport pants and a rough goodbye to one of the central women in our lives for 12 years

We'd been sitting on the plane on the ground about 30 minutes when the captain came on.

Terribly sorry, someone put fuel in the tank on the wing when it was supposed to remain empty. Now we are unbalanced, and cannot take off.  They are trying to remove the fuel now.

Forty-five minutes later.

They cannot figure out how to remove the fuel, so they are going to add fuel, instead, to the tank at the other wing.

Thirty minutes later.

They cannot figure out how to add the fuel, and we are 10,000 lbs. off. We cannot fly like this...We have called a mechanic, and he is on his way.

By now, people on the flight are starting to lose it, and we, on flight one of three, are rapidly losing our connection/customs time.

Three hours late and wondering if we'd be heading back home before we ever started, we finally left Haiti, and by now, Nora was asking to please just go home and play with Sam and Joel :)

We got through customs, got our bags, rechecked out bags, and got right onto our next flight to Charlotte, so thankful to have made it, and right at 7:30 pm.  We hadn't been on the flight 15 minutes that Matt had this huge allergy attack, which often happens to him while flying (this man and his allergies.)

He started sneezing, and sneezing, and sneezing, and with things the way they are in the world right now, immediately everyone around us started busting out the blue medical respirator masks and muttering. I've never seen anything like how upset people were...there is obviously a spirit of so much fear right now with Corona. While everyone overlooked four impressively quiet kiddos (the Lord gave them so much grace!) at bedtime on a long flight (in the wrong direction...why we had to go through Charlotte to go back to Florida, I have no idea) everyone was terrified of Matt's sneezing attack.  Poor man, for almost an hour he sneezed and sneezed, and by the time we got to Charlotte, his face was swollen, his eyes were pouring and his head was pounding, and he was wiped.

We had to book it to get to our next flight, they called our group to board at 10 pm, and literally as the agent was scanning our tickets to board, the computer froze...they moved to a different desk, but quickly learned that the whole terminal was down...then that the whole airport computer system was down.  At 11 pm, IT had it going again, and we boarded, and then there was a pin in the luggage hold that needed replaced.

I'm not even kidding.

Ben, Lily and Sofie were still wide awake, and we waited, and waited, waited on the tiny plane of increasingly grouchy (and increasingly intoxicated) passengers.

Couldn't replace the pin...damage to the luggage rack was un-fixable....we would need to change planes, it is now midnight (I have successfully, finally wrestled the crib-loving-only boy to sleep and Sofie has announced lots of "Happy Valentine's Days!"...wait...a different mechanic thinks maybe he can entirely replace it. We are waiting to see...

I mean.  

By the time we took off at 1 am for the 90 minute flight, Matt feeling pretty miserable and now all the kiddos asleep in various pretzel positions, I was pinned down, pillow to one and bed to another, and TIRED.

But instead of trying to finally sleep in and out, it occurred to me quite strongly and clearly that the Lord had given me a quiet, precious time and place to pray.

To lift up these four weeks. To lift up the dozing five Ayars around me. To lift up our precious friends and family, here and there and everywhere.

SO, I woke myself up instead and indulged in it, and wherever you are, there was a tired, smelly, piled on mama in the sky last night carrying you to the throne.

I had your names in this list, but I've taken them out: you know who you are and I was praying and I don't want to violate any trust.

I was praying for you mamas with your whiny, crazy toddlers, praying with such understanding and a strengthened heart. I was praying for you, new mamas, awake with me, too, and bouncing precious babies who don't care what time it is. I was praying for you faithful prayer warriors, we stand on the strength of your ever-faithful prayers, and God was bringing you, one after another, to my mind and I lifted you up, higher still.

I was praying for you I know to be fighting-lonely ones. I was praying for you I know to be end of your strength beloved ones. I was praying for you desiring children and waiting, instead. I was praying for you desiring marriage, desiring change, desiring conversion of children, desiring different, and waiting, too.

I was praying for you in marriages so broken that it seems it would be more possible to sweep it away than to ever glue it back. I was praying for you weary, weary ones, exhaustedly on my way to rest. I was praying for all the grieving ones, for the hurting and sick ones, for the healing and restoration and peace and freedom that feel like it would take miracles, and it would...it will. I was praying specifically, one after another, for those I know to be afraid, and as I prayed His light filled your darkness in my prayers.

I prayed like I haven't had the peace and quiet and drive to pray in a very long time, on that terrible plane in a terrible, butt-arm-leg numbing position, at what felt like the worst place at the worst time and He was so there with me that it was the best, instead.

I love....

I love...

I love that in the very, very worst places-- where it feels like Haiti is....where it feels like so many are...where you might feel like YOU are-- the fact that Our Pursing God is THERE transforms it a precious and sacred place.

Today, as I'm still up at 6 am with ridiculous internal-clock children, as I'm unpacking and settling in to another place, not our own, just passing through--surrounded by many little signs of His love through people I haven't even met...a meal in the freezer, little gifts for my children, notes of encouragement, a place to stay--I am standing in the sacred place of His presence with you (and if you just can't, for you), and I am pausing to meet Him.

And He is here.