Heaven and Hell: Two Terminal Tales

Part 1: Heaven invades O’Hare

Kyle, Tim, Connie, Gabby, and I stood at the KLM counter stumbling around our large bags, trying, with great effort, to look like we knew what we were doing. We did not and to the people working at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, it was pretty evident.

It took a few minutes, but we finally had our boarding passes in hand. We then proceed to head towards the security check point when I heard someone call out my name. Someone who was not on my team. In confusion, I quickly turned around and saw quite a surprise. Roger and Sandy Miller (members of Asheville Mennonite and probably some of the coolest people I will ever meet) stood right in front of me with huge smiles on their faces.

Due to their kids’ employment with Delta Airlines, the Millers are able to fly standby to anywhere they want for free. So, they decided to come up and surprise us before we headed out of the country. I think my sister describe them and this event the best: they are so crazy and so wonderful all at the same time!

With plenty of pizza to go around, we sat with Roger and Sandy for a good hour before we had to head out. Angels, I believe, is how one of my teammates described them and their surprise. Who does stuff like that? Awesome people with large hearts.

I have been so completely blessed by the Millers and Asheville Mennonite Church as a whole. I cannot begin to explain how comforting it was to see them right before we left our familiar stomping groups for a whole new terrain. Because of them, we lifted off the ground towards the graying heavens with full stomachs and smiles on our faces.



Part 2: When hell invades…

It was shortly after 3 am Tuesday morning that I found myself wrapped in my pink blanket I had dug out of my carryon, sitting in the empty terminal. I had been trying to sleep, but there I sat, awake despite my exhaustion. My teammates were scattered on the floor or the bench beside me, rather sleeping or sitting in the deep silence of the Johannesburg airport.

“If there are any dimensions to hell,” I said to Kyle, currently the only teammate awake at the time, “then one of them is probably sitting in an airport terminal. Forever.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. We arrived to Jo’burg without any problems (minus the inability to sleep on the ride there). But when we got through customs we discovered that the money that was supposed to be wired to our group’s checking account for our room for the night was not there.

Uh… now what?

After a lot of indecision (mostly on my part), the group opted to crash at the airport instead of pulling our own personal funds together. Was this the best choice ever? Probably not. As I tried to get comfortable on the cold, metal bench, I found myself thinking, “this was a terrible, terrible choice.”

To make matters worse, I was only running on about 3-4 hours of inconsistent sleep in the past 30 hours. So beyond healthy rest habits beyond my control, my emotions continued to rise and once again began to wonder what the heck am I doing here?

Even though that breaking point in the empty terminal has past, the question still hovers, sometimes frantically, in my mind. Honestly, it completely sucks that I do not know the answer to that question and there is a good chance that I won’t know the answer for a very long time, maybe not even until we get back to the States. And that, right now, seems a lifetime away.

It’s helpful to acknowledge that lack of sleep typically means lack of perspective. With that in mind, I realize that this is probably a moment we’ll look back on and laugh. But for now, I think I need get a few more hours of sleep before that can happen.

I cling to the promise that things will get better. They just about have to.