handled with care.

 I'm officially home now!! Here's what I wrote in London Heathrow before I caught my flight back home!


I’m sitting in the London Heathrow airport right now, Starbucks in hand, with almost THREE full hours before my flight to Dallas leaves. There’s no internet so this probably won’t be posted until I get home, but I wanted to share how faithful our God is, even in the small things.

I’m flying all the way home from Zambia alone, and that really terrified me before I left. The other summer staff girls know how anxious I was about the whole process.. the only time I’ve flown solo was from Dallas to College Station- suuuuper big deal, right? With that experience, flying halfway across the WORLD by myself had been kind of looming over my head. Not only that, but my halfway stop is London, and the Olympics still going strong here, so I realllly didn’t know what to expect.

Needless to say, this two-day solo trip of mine has been covered in prayer. And God has so faithfully and sweetly answered those prayers! In Lusaka, the usually mile-long security line was non-existent, leaving me plenty of time to get through the other checkpoints and onto my flight. Now I have this slightly irrational fear that security will find something wrong with my luggage or with my visa or something as I’m trying to leave the country, but praise the Lord, nothing like that happened! The flight to London was fine, got a little sleep, but it was so smooth and I was so at ease the whole time. Now arriving in London was much more scary to me. This airport is HUGE, and I had the challenge of switching terminals without finding myself in the middle of the city. So I arrived, walked right up to the immigration desk (another miles-long line avoided, thank you Jesus), and found the Heathrow Express. Here was the tricky part. My hotel, the cleverly named Yotel, was in Terminal 4 and my flight unloaded in Terminal 5. One quick tube ride between these terminals, right? Wrong. From Terminal 5, you can take the Heathrow Express to Heathrow Central, which is Terminals 1 & 3, and then transfer and hop on another train to take you to Terminal 4. Finding the right trains could have been tricky, but it wasn’t! God is so good! So I get to Terminal 4 and now have to locate the Yotel. Found it, got settled in, and had a lovely evening to myself.

This morning, the first challenge was waking up on time. If you know me at all, you probably know that I am a HEAVY sleeper and have had my fair share of oversleeping experiences. I set three alarms (my iPod, my alarm clock, AND my watch) just in case, and I woke up to the first one! YAY! Here was my plan: anticipating Olympics crowds, I had planned to leave my room at 8am for my 11:45 flight. I had no idea how long I would have to wait for the tubes back to Terminal 5, and I was expecting security to be a straight-up nightmare. Not the case for either of these. I literally hurdled myself and my carry-ons onto the first train as the doors were closing (miracle) and had to wait only ten minutes for the next one. In about 20 minutes I was already back in Departures in Terminal 5. (I was expecting that to take waaaay longer.) Since I had already been checked in for both flights back in Lusaka, I just had to go through security. The whole darn process took 5 minutes. No lines, no waiting, just walked right up and made it through. An hour after I left my hotel room in Terminal 4, I was standing in line for my first Starbucks in two months, essentially ready to board my flight. So I figured I’d blog about it all since I have SO much extra time.

Here’s what I love about all of this. God knew just how nervous I was to fly across the world all alone. He knew my fears and He looked through my eyes and saw how looming of a task I thought this was. The whole time I’ve been navigating the Lusaka and London airports, I’ve felt so held by Him. He literally has had his guiding arm around me, pointing me in the right direction each step of the way. My dad is always the one that I feel most comfortable traveling with- He knows how to navigate airports like it’s nobody’s business, and I never ever have to worry when he’s with me. If I trust my earthly father with such things, how could I have expected any less from my Heavenly Father this time? Like I said, my Daddy had His arm around me the whole time, just like my earthly Dad would have if He were with me. He showed me the way, and He went ahead and made the way EASY for me.

So here’s a thank you to the Lord for holding my hand through this whole trip! I realize that there are bigger things in this world than catching two flights alone, but even God took care of every detail of this task that seemed big to me, but small in relation to most of the other problems in the world. So, in all of this spare time that I have, I figured the best way to pass the time was to share about the faithfulness of my God and Father and thank Him for His provision and guidance! That’s all I’ve got for now!