Traveling Troubles & Life Lessons

It was a laboratory for human behavior, and what an experiment it was. Thousands of men, women, children, grandparents, friends, and strangers were stranded, immobilized, frozen in the middle of their journeys to spend the holidays with loved ones. There is little point in trying to determine who was to blame, Mother Nature and the airlines were both complicit in the matter. The real point of interest was people’s behavior in the midst of their shattered plans.

To say that people respond differently in crisis and stress is quite the understatement. No one can deny that some are more resilient than others, that some take the idea of fight-or-flight too literally, and that others fall into some state of utter despair. We experienced it all that night. As Natalie and I watched the different ways in which passengers and airline employees each danced to music of the crisis, we felt as though we were getting our own little lesson in human behavior. And we did our best to soak it all in.

At the time, I was pretty impressed with us. We did not get too flustered or upset. We never got irate or lost control of our emotions. We even did a pretty good job keeping things light hearted at our gate. When our flight was finally cancelled, we even considered renting a van with our newfound friends and trekking to Tulsa together. We had made it through the first stage of the experiment alright. What I did not anticipate, however, was stage two of the experiment.

Over the next four days Natalie and I spent hours on our cell phones trying to locate our luggage. We were indefinitely grounded in Detroit and were in anxious pursuit of two bags with clothes, toiletries, and a few gifts for family. The search was all encompassing. We could barely sleep. We watched movies and shoveled snow while listening to crackling elevator music and a recording that periodically assured us, “Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available agent.”

After several days of nothing, an airline representative finally rummaged around the hectic zoo called the Tulsa International Airport until he found our two lost bags. Relief. Peace. What was lost had been found.

Since then I have been struggling with what this incident has revealed about my own desires and compulsions. I am struck once again at how connected I am to material things. I lost two bags containing things like underwear and deodorant, and I was paralyzed until I knew where our possessions were. I was convicted of my need to be in control, to make decisions and have all of the information.

The Christmas season tends to be its own laboratory. It has its own way of testing us and shaking the status quo. Holiday commercials and sales whet our insatiable desire for more and more stuff. They assure us that the latest thing will satisfy us and make us happy. Yet, Christmas also reminds us that God incarnated himself to a poor family in a stable with only poor shepherds to welcome him, while those in control, the powerful and rich, stayed in the comforts of their homes and inns. Our attempts to grasp possessions only illuminate our desperate need to be in control. But God comes to those who are empty, to those who have nothing, to those who know that their only hope is to relinquish control. May we empty ourselves this year. May we turn our desire for things and for control into a deep longing for God. When we do, we might find that God comes to us again, just like that first Christmas, in surprising and unexpected places.