The Day of Coincidences
March 18, 2022
It’s 4am, I’m jumping out of bed to the not alarm because one of the youngers turned the phone (aka alarm) on silent, and racing to start a cup of coffee. Ran the water through yesterday’s grounds to get slightly colored water – oops. Christina had to catch a flight out of JAX at 6am (Actually, 6:15, but you know) for her Women-In-Aviation conference in Nashville. Louis goes, “it’s only a 45 minute drive, you only need 30 minutes at the airport, not an hour.”
All my ECO-Ride experience and I’ve never left less than an hour of time from airport drop-off to plane departure, but you know, he drives now, not me.
New, real, coffee to make my shakeology.
Grandma, Christina, and I load up, ride to JAX, and she’s there before 5:10am. Sweet.
Not.
TSA stopped her for a box of business cards. Released from that line five minutes after her flight left.
She’s now on standby for the next flight to Baltimore because there she could possibly catch a standby for Nashville (the next direct to Nashville was at 9pm). Next possible to Baltimore is after 10am.
I go to leave for gym and Grandma sees Christina’s CAP cover in the yard. I start check-in, tell my boss we have to go back to JAX, wait til Grandma cleans said cover and loads the youngest two passengers, transfer everyone to the 4Runner, and we drive the CAP cover up to Christina with Thea singing in the backseat, “no job too big, no Thea too small.”
Two adults in the car allows for Grandma to race the cap to Christina and I’m not leaving the car unattended for a few seconds in the departing lane… Christina gets back into the airport.
Flight time comes, TSA says “we don’t like your lotion.” (It passed through inspection 4 hours ago??)
She misses this standby by 12 minutes.
Third standby… oops, we forgot to deep check your foot powder that passed inspection at 6am and at 10am… so TSA pulls her out of line again!… but for this one, she makes the plane with 1 minute to spare.
Thank you, Jesus!
She’s in Baltimore, next possible to Nashville leaves at 1645. Take a breath. A nice lady there helps her, upgrades her from standby to boarding and makes sure she gets on the plane.
Finally, I get a text at 1917. She’s in Nashville and has to find her luggage that arrived at her original arrival time of 0635.
Delays and coincidences? I don’t believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe it was just to make sure that my CAP pilot had her cover so she was in full regs… maybe it was to teach her patience… to teach us not to worry… to show my fully independent young woman how capable she is… for whatever reason, through more than a long workday at Jacksonville International Airport and a short shift at Baltimore, she made it to her destination intact.
Originally, I was very upset with myself because, even with the TSA delays, she would have made the first plane if I hadn’t taken the extra time to brew a real cup of coffee… but then how would we have gotten her cover to her?
First passenger I’d ever driven to the airport who had missed their flight – I’d even had a woman who had to have a potty break every exit and we got turned around in GA headed for the JAX airport and she still made her flight. My brain screamed at me about that…
God’s timing. He knew the cover didn’t make it in her carry-on. He knew it was important. He knew who would be watching, who would be encouraged, by this story both as it unfolded and as you read it now.
I take a breath, remind myself to always move forward and never beat myself up for the past – If we can trust God to keep the world spinning what is hard about trusting for tiny things like airport timing and CAP covers? (oh, and my books showed up in person while we were out!)
Thank you, Jesus, for little adventures like this that remind me how everything always works out just as it should when we keep calm, move forward, and trust.
Hope you have a lovely day!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart