My husband is a master planner, especially when it comes to travel.  So, when we embarked on this sabbatical adventure, I had no worries because I knew he had planned the trip, down to which rest areas we should use.  You might imagine that kind of exacting detail would translate to rigidity – someone who can become rattled when things do not go as planned.  But that is not the case with my husband.  In addition to being a master planner, he is also absolutely the person you want in the room when things go sideways.  He is able to quickly shift, make alterations, and carry things forward seamlessly.

Today, just day three of our twenty-one-day adventure, those skills came in very handy.  The first hiccup happened when our lunch plans got altered.  Our lunch date got called away (welcome to the life of a priest-parent!).  I was super sad about missing our visit but know all too well that things happen.  But when you travel with my super husband, all is not lost.  During lunch, my husband coordinated Plan B, and off we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  I had only seen the site in pictures, but pictures cannot capture the power of seeing all those names, retelling the tragic story to our kids, noting small chairs for the children in daycare who died that day, and even worse, the one chair that indicated the death of a pregnant woman, with the unborn named child on her chair.  It was a powerful moment of sobriety and a reminder to all of us how much we need to savor one another.

Fast forward to our final destination.  We were all tired and a bit weary.  When we stopped at our hotel to check in, we figured the water gushing from a ceiling down the hall was a bad sign.  Sure enough, the hotel’s water had been shut down, with no estimated fix schedule.  Before we even got through the line to cancel our registration, my husband was already booking an alternative hotel on his phone, and then calling customer service to make sure our prior booking wouldn’t charge our card.  Our frazzled, anxious little family was on our way to a new hotel less than a block away within the half-hour.

It had been a heavy day.  We began the day with conversations about the Trail of Tears, why there are so many reservations in Oklahoma, and what we can do as consumers to support the economy of indigenous Americans.  We talked about Juneteenth, and wondered about our experiences in Little Rock and how much more work we have to do.  We recalled mass violence and the death penalty as we walked through the vivid artistry of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  And we dealt with our own travel hiccups.  Needless to say, as walked in 100-degree weather to an impromptu dinner, we were all a bit worse for the wear.

And then I saw it.  A beautiful, unusual flower lining the road of our walk.  It seemed silly to stop and take a picture of the flowers (or at least, so my then cranky family told me), but I knew this was the Holy Spirit’s way of telling me to look around at the blessings of the day:  to remember the constant invitation to think about injustice in all its forms and how we can be agents of change; to remember that even when things do not go your way, sometimes equally wonderful things happen; to remember that even in the midst of sweaty, weary, whiny messes, God uses the gifts of all of us (problem-solving husbands, caring strangers, and even nature herself) to renew and restore us.  What blessings has the Holy Spirit been trying to show you today?