Last weekend my son and daughter played the obligatory roles of ring bearer and flower girl in my nephew’s wedding in Des Moines. I barely made it there on Saturday morning after flight delays from Seattle into Chicago and then missing my connection (of course on the other side of Chicago O’Hare from where the Seattle flight landed) by seconds. There’s nothing more disappointing than getting to the gate and actually seeing the plane that you were supposed to get on pulling away.
I walked across the street to the Hilton and then ran out after I heard the words “$299 per night”. It was a $69 Super 8 night for me.
The wedding went fine. Jeremy and Kailey made it down the aisle. Thomas and Amy got married. All in all it was a fun day with my brother, his family and my Uncle Bob and his. We hung out, told stories and had a great time.
The next morning my wife and I woke up and realized that we were in Des Moines…so we drove our family 4 hours north to The Mall of America. Debb and I had never been there so we decided to make the trip. It was an absolute blast. The little amusement park they have there in the middle of the mall kept us busy for a day and the overpriced aquarium they have there kept us busy for an hour.
All is all we spent 26 hours in Minneapolis but it was a fun time. And the 4 hour trip back to the Des Moines airport was fun and fast (me speeding? say it isn’t so!)
Once again our flight got delayed and we ended up leaving hours after our scheduled flight. We had to divert around one of the biggest thunderstorms I have ever seen. Seeing it from the top was amazing. We had to divert from Iowa around South Dakota and finally back down to Denver on the other side of the storm.
For almost an hour my wife and I watched the lighting flash from above the storm. The lightning was almost constant, flashing with power on both sides of the plane in a brilliant light show. It was breathtaking, scary and awesome. Suffice it to say that nobody throws a fireworks show like God. I reassured my wife with the words “and think we are in a metal object flying above all this electricity.”
But in our heart of hearts we knew that it was not Thor but our Daddy in charge of those bolts. That hour was scary and sacred for me (isn’t it weird that the words “scared” and “sacred” are so close in spelling?) I thought about our current cash crunch at Dare 2 Share and some of the challenges we are facing as I looked at the storm. I realized that just like God was protecting our plane from the lightning bolts below us he was protecting Dare 2 Share from the flashing dangers around us. He carried my family safely home that night and will do the same with this ministry.
I love you Daddy!
