It's 6am and I'm at gate 33 waiting to fly back to Regan National via Memphis. This trip has not been what I expected. I guess I expected a fun productive trip. It's been productive . . . and very challenging.
We began the trip on Sunday with a canceled flight and nothing available until Monday at noon. That cut our 2 days in Tulsa to 1 right away. So, we adapted. We drove to Ocean City Sunday and stayed the night there. Monday morning we got to the boardwalk around 6:30 to shoot that portion of our video. Then the three hour drive back to Regan National Airport.
We arrived in Tulsa at about 5:30pm on Monday, did some taping at an old apartment complex I lived at as a kid, visited Guitar Center to try and figure out our audio troubles (which we never did) had dinner and then visited River Walk Crossing for some night time taping. In bed by midnight.
Tuesday was to be our super productive day. Thank God the morning was. We began around 9:30 and shot some video at a couple mega churches in town, an old Baptist Church, my former high school, the pedestrian bridge at the river and downtown. We finished up our video shoot downtown and had lunch.
After lunch we were headed back to River Walk Crossing to interview a local pastor, but we never made it. At the intersection of 1st and Cincinnati I sailed right through a red light, which I didn't see until it was too late, and we had ourselves a nice little accident. Thankfully no one was hurt.
After the police finished up their stuff and wrote me a ticket, we tried to move on, but discovered our rental car was not drivable. The tow truck arrived nearly two hours later and took us back to the airport where I discovered the car rental company would not rent me another car . . . for reasons that are linked exclusively to my own foolishness and I'm not ready to write about yet because I'm still smarting a bit. I also discovered that it's not possible to rent a car using a Visa debit card. So, we called a cab and went back to the airport. After a couple hours of sulking and praying at various intervals, I finally insisted that we plan out the rest of our video that we had come to Tulsa to shoot. We didn't get everything we wanted, but we got enough. In bed by 9:30pm.
Woke up at 3am this morning feeling the weight of the world. God's Word really helped heal my heart today. I love God. We took a cab to the airport this morning and I think the driver, named Jerry, will be part of our church. I feel humbled and grateful this morning.
Jason Fitch - lead pastor
2 Corinthians 4: 8-10 - We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken.
The Power of Brokenness.
ReplyDeleteJ, I LOVE that verse. It helps me so much when I feel so... clay. And a little cracked. Days like you had can eat up a lot of energy.
ReplyDeleteToday Greg Surrat said (rough quote) our biggest occupational hazard is, discouragement. And it it the one thing we don't plan enough for. We plan for everything else, but we should have a bigger plan to handle discouragement. I tell my guys that you can have a pity party and sit on the pity potty. Just don't sit long enough to get ring-around-the-heiney.
I loved it. And I love how indomitable your spirit is, J.