My layover in life

In 2012, on my way to Slovakia, we had a layover in London. We missed our flight because our plane was late getting in, and I thought we would have to sleep in the airport and stay 24 hours. But two of our people flew out pretty shortly after, and the airport paid for the rest of us to stay in a hotel, paid for dinner, and we got to go see London for an entire day! It was the best layover of my life! London was never somewhere I thought I would get to see. I was so excited to get on the upstairs part of the double decker bus, and just be in a foreign city that I wasn't expecting to see.

On top of that, that night at the hotel I was put in a room with a girl named Katie, who I didn't know very well, and that night was when our friendship really started. She woke me up by talking in her sleep in the middle of the night and I didn't know she was sleeping so I responded, which woke her up, and then we ended up talking for a few hours. And our lifelong friendship began. I remember thinking that night that I really wanted to be friends with this girl, and I had missed that realization before.

So when I pray for people in their traveling, I usually pray that they catch their flights at the right time, but that if they don't, that God would make their layover a great one. It has also been such a cool metaphor in my life in that we always want to catch our flight and get to the places we want to go in a timely manner and not hate the way there. But what if on the way there your layover is NOT where you're stuck in an airport for 24 hours, but getting to go sightseeing and making a best friend?

What if this "layover" in between jobs for me is not to be seen as a punishment or a terrible time, but somehow something good will happen? Maybe I won't get a job right away, but maybe God will have a purpose for the in-between time, and later I will say it was the best in-between time I could have had. It doesn't mean I won't still look hard for a job. It doesn't mean I'll be lazy. It doesn't mean I'll just read books for 10 hours a day. But in this time, I want to be attune to what God is doing, what He is teaching me, what He is saying, and where He wants me to go.

I'll probably be blogging / writing a little more during this time, and I hope that somehow it will be encouraging to others, and that it will bring glory to God and to what He is doing. I have heard other people telling their stories of what God has done and is doing in their life, and sometimes it's just amazing to hear, and so I hope I can do the same. My sweet friend Anna tells me all the time to write a book because of the things God has done in my life, and I told her I might some day, but it'll probably be a few years. :-)