A Trip & What Could Have Been.

Grand Rapids, Michigan

April 15, 2024

📍Wichita

The airport wifi is slow. Don’t even bother trying to connect to it. And right next to me there are some lessons going on. Some experienced airport wheelchair-pusher is trying to explain to some new delequents how to push two wheelchairs at once. I wonder if I should try that trick at Bethel?

I did not know that Wichita airport was so small. I got here so early that I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m used to Denver with the train and gates that are all the way down at B95 and having to walk miles and… is that guy a Mennonite? Probably. He’s trying to figure me out and avoid my gaze all at once.

📍Atlanta

Once in Atlanta, I sat down to eat my $14 spinach tortilla wrap and wait. I decided it was maybe worth $5. Maybe 6 if they had lettuce that wasn’t slimy. Once I realized that my flight had been boarding for some time already, I airport-fast-walked to the gate and shuffled on board.

📍Grand Rapids

And then I was in Michigan. Suv’s white Chevy Cruze awaited and so did a hundred strangers I had never met. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. It’s too scary. Too late, I’m already here.

We drank coffee and played volleyball and sang for hours with strangers who became friends. (Perhaps the best friends I made were the pug and the cat.) Between the singing and the volleyball and the getting to know people, I found myself wondering what could have been. I wonder what could have been if I had ended up coming to the unit in Ann Arbor.

That was the plan, after all. I was so excited. My oldest sister had come here, and ever since we visited her when I was 13, I was sold out. I signed my application on my 18th birthday and sat down to wait.

I don’t remember what the set date was. I feel like it was August 2020. I had received my papers and knew who my roomie was going to be. She was from Saskatchewan and I was afraid of her, but I had thought about messaging her so we could get a head start on the whole bestie thing. I felt like my life was finally going to begin. Most of my friends had gone away to teach. I had been spending my summers working in Ronan, but I still felt like there was something missing. I wanted to give back, and I was going to be able to in the Ann Arbor unit.

Then, one March morning in 2020 while I was in Uganda, I got the email that COVID had worked her cruel magic and the unit was shut down until further notice. No worries, though. It should be back up and running within 6 months. Well, I’m sure we all know how untrue that was. Of course, nobody was anticipating the craziness that was about to take over. And, with Michigan’s COVID laws stricter than some, the unit remained closed.

When things started to normalize again, they asked me if I wanted to go to Denver. But that felt weird. It was so close to home, and I am not a settler; so I would wait for Ann Arbor. However, it was beginning looking like l might have to wait forever. I was starting to think there was nothing for me to do; that God didn’t even want my time. Yet, I had a desire— almost a need— to do something for Him. Still, there was no sign of the unit opening any time soon. Michigan continued to have some of the strictest COVID laws out there, and the unit remained closed.

That’s when I began to consider the mission. I had always wondered if I would go. Since visiting Dean in Uganda, I had thought about it almost every day. I always thought I’d go when the time is right. I always thought I’d go when I was 25 or so. Then one day, as I was driving down Highway 93 to Polson, I had a lightbulb moment— a single thought I can almost still hear: “What would be a better time than right now?”

I couldn’t seem to say. The unit seemed like a closed door. I knew it would probably open eventually, but suddenly it didn’t hold the appeal that it once did. And so, on April Fool’s day, 2021, I signed my application to teach in the mission. I was driving home from Dave and Twila’s house on Father’s Day when Mr. Brubaker called to tell me it was Bangladesh.

I wouldn’t trade it and I think you know that. But, while I’m here in Michigan, I can’t help but wonder what could have been. And sometimes I have to sit back and marvel at God’s plan. I was so sure it would be Ann Arbor, and it very much was not.

I’m sure Michigan would have been great. It has been every other time I’ve come. I’m sure I would have come back from Ann Arbor with a heart full of memories and friends forever. I know I would have loved the hospital and my sisters and all the other people I would have met along the way. But, at the time, it wasn’t meant to be.

There are lots of things I don’t know. I don’t know why plans fall apart and dreams crash. I don’t know why God leads us in vastly directions at times we never anticipated. But I do know one thing: He has a plan, and His plan will be better and anything we could have drummed up.

(Also p.s. the trip was worth it.

10/10 would go again.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ highly recommend.)