My Favorite Travel Day

Today is my favorite day of any trip, I’m flying home!  God has given me a wonderful gift, I love what comes next!  If I am having to leave home, He gives me anticipation for the trip that is starting.  When the trip is ending He gives me anticipation and joy that I’m going home.  You may be saying Duh!  Actually if what you do for a living requires you to be in the road over 200 days a year, that is a valuable asset!

I spent the first dozen years of my career with jobs like most people have, worked all day, was home every night and weekend.  Then I took a job that had a fair amount of travel, maybe 60 or more nights a year were spent away from home.  It was an adjustment, but it went fine.  A few years after that I started a workshop company and the real travel began, approximately 160 to 200 night a year.  It was at that point that Sherelene and I had to really adjust to being apart.    We both learned that even though we missed each other, we couldn’t dwell on it, night and day, it just made us miserable. We had to live in the moment.  If I was in Olympic National Park teaching a workshop, I had to concentrate on my students and enjoy the great opportunity God had given me,  Sherelene had to do the same thing back at the hospital where she was a Nurse Practitioner.   We prayed for each other and talked each day by phone (now we text, can’t believe, I’ve gotten that modern!!  We still talk too!).  Anyway I don’t love her any less, I probably love her even more, but I have work to do, she has work to do, and we “just do it!”

What won’t work is to simply not think of each other at all!  That won’t work with God either.  A relationship is on going, it’s constant, and to keep it alive and healthy, it has to include constant communication.  Paul said, “pray constantly.”  He wasn’t kidding!  I find that to keep my relationship with Christ vital, I have to be constantly taking my petitions and concerns to Him in prayer.  I don’t have to get on my knees in an airport terminal or behind the counter at a show to pray.  I simply talk to Him in my mind.  I’m sure everyone is different, but I don’t pray “King James” prayers anymore.  I don’t say, “Our Father who art in Heaven…..”  (of course I do still recite the Lord’s prayer), but in moment to moment communication with Him, I think and speak my prayers in a much more natural way.  I embraced a friend yesterday who was sharing a very touching story relating to his family and how God miraculously intervened, as his eyes filled with tears, I hugged him.  I said, in my spirit,  “Father thank you so much for making yourself so real to my brother, bless him and keep him close to you! I love Him so much I know he is precious to you!”   Simple words, profound request!  I believe that God hears our prayers, real time, right now, and He always answers them.  It may not be the answer we were expecting and it might not be apparent immediately that it was answered, but I know the moment we utter a prayer, God puts things in motion.  One wonderful revelation is that He never makes a mistake!  Whatever He does in response to our prayers is “always” the right answer, and if we wait, He will show us why it was in His good time!

So this morning as I finish packing, (another of my favorite activities), I will be thanking Him for a great show, for my wonderful Nikon friends, for the people I’ve gotten to meet and visit with, the old friends that work for other companies that I’ve enjoyed seeing again.  I will thank Him for my close, dear friends that support me in prayer, and love me in spite of my being who I am!  I will thank Him that we have some exciting new products that will make my job a pleasure for months and years to come.  I will thank Him for allowing me to love photography so much, for getting paid to do something I still do when I have a day off!   I will thank Him for protecting Sherelene while I’ve been gone, for watching over my family, for giving me things in the future to look forward to, and for knowing, when I go home to be with Him, I will hug Him, and this time the tears will be in my eyes!  Oh how I look forward to that embrace!  I don’t deserve it, but like everything else in this life it will be a gift from Him!

Be blessed,

the pilgrim