I am writing this from my socially distant vacation, sitting, staring at the ocean from the coast of Maine. Not a bad place to writing a newsletter article, but it was not where I thought I would be. Last November my wife’s family started to plan a family vacation to Ireland. My father-in-law and sister-in-law found an incredible deal on plane tickets and they thought, “Why not?”
Leaving with them would have been the first time I would have traveled outside of North America. It would be the first time anyone in my direct family line had been back to Europe other than fighting in a World War. As we started planning this trip, I told Miranda that if something could go wrong, it would.
Then COVID-19 happened. It was March. We thought this whole situation would be over by the time we left for Ireland. September was so far away that it was not even on my radar. I was busy trying to figure out how we could save the June Bahamas mission trip. Then, I couldn’t save it. The mission trip got postponed, along with the yard sale, and then church camp. Each time an event got postponed or cancelled I thought it surely would be the last.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. June turned to July, July to August, and now we are in September. It wasn’t until August that we finally cancelled our trip to Ireland. I was disappointed. I wanted to go to a place I had never been to before. I wanted to try food that I had never tasted and see castles built before America was even an idea.
I’m sure that I am not the only person that has felt like that this year. Many of us have missed vacations, annual events, and so many other moments that we were looking forward to. It is often those big events that help us get through the year. They are the things we look toward to make our lives a little happier. They give us hope, but they are not a true source of hope.
Hope comes from our God above. We can be disappointed in what this year has been. It is not what anyone expected. That doesn’t mean God was not in charge now and before. We couldn’t go to Ireland, so we pivoted. We rented a car and drove to Maine, one of the states with the lowest COVID-19 rates in America. We rented a nice little house near the beach, looked at the water, and ordered take-out. We had a wonderful and safe vacation. It was not what we expected to do, but it was just as good. I had never been to Maine much like I had never been to Ireland. I got to taste food that I had never tasted, and I got to see churches and town halls built well before anything that we have in Kentucky. Plus, it was much cheaper than traveling to Ireland!
It is alright to feel disappointed this year, but that does not mean you can’t still have hope in God. Things may be different from what you planned, but they are not different than God’s plans.