4.5 Hours 3/5/11

Another post so soon?? yes!

It's good. I promise.

So. Plane rides. For some reason God #1 blesses me--usually by freakishly always giving me a window seat absolutely every time I fly. #2 gives me something to process or think through and provides different ways for that happening.

Weeeeell. This time. I sit down at my window seat (pretty excited after finding my second 20 dollar bill in 2 days) and there is this little Asian lady sitting beside me and just some other woman beside her. I had ZERO plans of talking to them. I was in my zone. I had my ipod. I had my book. I had my journal.

About 2-ish hours into the flight I'm starting to get pretty emotional over recent happenings in my life. Just trying to process my feelings and just asking God to be with me the next 3 hours in a big way because we all know crying in public is just a bit awkward. Crying isn't my thing in general...but on a plane...with 3 hours left...strangers..no thanks.

I'm sitting there, music is playing, I'm kind of reading and all of a sudden this little Asian face comes into my peripheral sight quite abruptly and freaking scares the junk out of me. She was asking me if I wanted the 2nd half of her sandwich because I had not ordered anything and they were not serving snacks. I said no thank you (but that was so so sweet) and thought that was the end..but you know. God has plans.

Basically I start talking to 56 year old Peichun about my life plans (or not wanting to have plans right now) and job stuff. No big deal. Well then she starts to tell me that her son does a campus ministry at GA Tech and how she just LOVES that he is serving the Lord and growing. We have a connection immediately. I tell her about my job at Wesley and she is so excited that I'm a fellow believer and starts to tell me her story. She was married for 26 years and had very recently gone through a divorce. She tells me that in her culture, it was very common for parents to make their children, after meeting someone, take a year away from communicating. No nothing. They have to sit and wait and honor their parents and tradition. She only went through that process for 6months with her husband and rebelled against her mothers wishes to 1. marry him and 2. finish the next 6 months. She never felt like her marriage had been blessed. She told me that now she thinks 50 days is what couples should do. ha. of course Peichun. You would be the one sitting beside me on the plane.

She tells me that now she is dating this guy, but not really dating. She sees wonderful things in Him and wants a future with him but he still needs to be at home with his children and she is giving him that time. She is being self less and letting God bring them together at the right time because they just want to be extra sure that they should be together.

Peichun starts asking about my life....and, welll. let's just say I spill it. All of it. Peichun asks to pray for me and holding my hand on the Delta plane, that is what she did. I cried. Of course.....

Doesn't stop there though. The lady sitting beside Peichun kind of starts getting in on the conversation and it turns out she also loves the Lord a lot and we all just get excited. This is Jessica. She is from Holland but lives in San Francisco. You could say that Jessica is my older twin of personality. She lived so independently for so long--has to learn lessons the hard way--but she is willing to learn and sees the beauty in the process. She is recently married and tells me her story of waiting on the right guy. Her story was so encouraging to me because God literally had to scream at her, you cannot control who you end up with. They have to choose you back. I now tell her recently happenings of my life and she just smiles and says it's funny how when God needs you to learn a lesson it seems like chaos but comes out beautiful. She just encouraged me not to see anything as a mess I've made...and not to focus on my mistakes in this..but just to praise God in once again bringing me closer to Him with how I trust. He was always in this and always knew what I needed to learn in order to have another person in my life. Regardless if something is from Him, even after I get it, it still has to be 100% His. He still gets to decide what happens with it. Nooooot meeeeeee. Hard lesson for me. Jessica understands.

anyways--this 4.5 hours of my life was such a blessing. I cannot go into detail about everything we talked about because we all know it would take me 10 pages and no one would read my blogs anymore. So I hope this is sufficient detail for everyone to see how divinely orchestrated my life is..once again. Thank you God. really. thank you.