Sitting on a dirty airport carpet at 3:00 am, with the second flight of our mission trip cancelled, I felt hopeless. My itinerary at the bottom of my backpack was useless to me now. The industrial vacuum whirled by us while I wiped the grogginess from my eyes. As I looked around, I didn’t know what to think.
Anyone who knows me knows that I need everything planned out to a T. If there is not a plan, I will make one. I struggle with anxiety and uncertainty when there is anything left up in the air. Knowing what’s going to happen down to the minute helps relieve my anxiety.
But at that moment, none of it mattered. I felt on edge not knowing what was going to happen at all. As I looked around, I made eye contact with my friend Anna. While everyone was sitting by themselves in silence, she cracked a joke. I don’t even remember what it was about, but the tension in the room was broken. When she snapped our minds out of it, we all started laughing and couldn’t stop. Suddenly, what began as a terrible night turned into one of laughter and games. My friend Katie grabbed a worn deck of cards and dealt them out. We played games, laughed as loud as the vacuum coming towards us, and recorded silly videos. We walked around the airport at 4 in the morning, exploring everywhere we could. As soon as the Chick-Fil-A opened, we got breakfast and sat down on the same carpet, but it felt different by the time the sun went up.
I believe when losing control of plans, people can always retain the ability to control their outlook on it. If it weren’t for my friends Anna and Katie to help me embrace the unknown, I would’ve been an anxious puddle the rest of the night. Instead, they showed me how powerful this belief can be when put into play. While I hopefully won’t experience a situation like that again, on an airport floor with no luggage or a shower in days, the experience grew me as a person.
I have since been able to be okay with losing control every now and then. When I returned home, everyone asked me what I learned, and expected stories from the mission work itself. But I couldn’t stop replaying the moment in my mind, where, on the dirty airport floor, the future was uncertain but we made the most of it. It’s easy to look at your circumstances and wallow in them. But what I learned is that when a plan breaks down, your reaction to the chaos matters a lot more than the original plan ever did.
