Vacation Woes

“But God, I don’t understand. I’m trying to get over it and stop worrying, but the feeling in the pit of my stomach, You know, the one that makes me feel kind of sick for no apparent reason? It won’t go away. I call it my peace indicator. When I have Your peace, I don’t have that feeling in there, but I don’t have Your peace and I can’t seem to get it. I don’t know if I should be grateful or devastated. At first I was the latter, but after having some time of reflection, now, I’m disappointed for sure, but at least I know everyone is safe and relatively happy.” Discussing the situation with God, I wiped a run away tear from my eye.

“I thought our plans were pretty solid. We trusted the boy to be here when he said he would. Leaving the dogs with people they know and that we trust is important. We prepared them and him for a month. I am totally surprised still, that he called as we were half way to our destination to find he was in another city two and a half hours away from home! I should have listened to my gut then that said to turn around and come home, but I wanted to go on to celebrate our 20th anniversary. I somehow wanted to make it okay so we could still go on our vacation. After all, our friends were meeting us there, the next day. The boy’s story became a wild tale as he rambled on until I just couldn’t let it be okay anymore.

The more I thought about what he said, the more it didn’t make sense. Did he think I was an idiot? I had my husband call him and see what he got out of it. Now the boy was saying he might not be home until later that evening. We turned the car around after being ten minutes away from our destination and drove the three hours back home. Thank You, God that my kids were safe and they didn’t have any accidents in the house. They were so excited to see us! And we were relieved to see them and the house in one piece.”

After I unpacked everything, I still had the stomach thing and the heart palpitations going on. Not being able to find God’s peace, I prayed and forgave the boy for being irresponsible. God knows, I’ve been irresponsible a time or two in my life, especially at eighteen. I feel bad for the boy, but he still refused to take any responsibility for his actions. It was his friends fault or our fault for not trusting him, when we couldn’t trust him…he wasn’t here! He didn’t get it, but I hope and pray someday he does.

I suppose it could be worse, we could be having our vacation and he could have abandoned the kids or something could have happened and we really should have been. Lucy could have had a seizure, anything. Only God knows the plans he has for us, plans to prosper us.

As hard as this was to take, it was a lesson well learned. We can only have people care for the dogs that know them and that we know personally. And, leave wiggle room in your plans, something I don’t know how to do, but will have to learn.