My inconvenience was inconvenient

I had a brown gift bag waiting by the door. A mermaid music box, a Strawberry Shortcake doll, ready for my girls the second they got home from daycare.

I wasn't going to make it home in time to give it to them.

I sat in the airport and watched my delay stretch later and later until I finally accepted it: I'd missed my connection, and I had six hours until the next one. Then weather grounded the entire airport, and six hours started looking optimistic.

I was heartbroken. I'd been gone all week. I just wanted to be home.

And then I reflected on what day it was.

September 11th. Twenty-five years since thousands of families didn't get delayed. They didn't get home at all.

My inconvenience was inconvenient. That's it. That's all it was. But sitting there eating Chick-fil-A, surrounded by the same frustrations I'd been feeling minutes earlier, I had to sit with that for a second.

So many of us started visiting with each other while we waited. A girl trying to get to a Pitbull concert. A mom headed to celebrate her oldest's birthday. A woman who'd been away all week for work, ready to be home too. Everyone had somewhere to be, and everyone was frustrated about the same six hours.

There was a man next to me who was visibly upset, more than the rest of us. So I told him what I'd been telling myself: that on a day like today, I was doing my best to keep some perspective, because this day means something different for so many families.

He went quiet and his response is what got me.

"I hadn't thought of that... I guess you're right."

I don’t think he meant any harm by it. He was pretty close to where I'd been ten minutes earlier, stuck in his own inconvenience, same as me.

But the words that had flooded my timeline all day suddenly made a lot more sense…Never forget.

How could we? 

But if I'm honest, sitting in that terminal upset about a bag I couldn't hand over on time... I almost had.

It's easy to get swept up in our own ________. Insert your inconvenience, your struggle, your hard season. I get swept up in mine plenty.

But maybe never forget doesn't only belong to what happened 25 years ago. Maybe it's also for today: the good still in front of us, the people waiting at home, the strangers who turn into a real conversation for the length of a delay. 

One of those conversations turned into an actual friendship. We traded emails and numbers before we went our separate ways, and we're already planning to overlap at an event next year.

I made it home eventually. Late, tired, still holding that little brown bag, and a lot more aware that walking through my own front door was never guaranteed. 

Maybe that's the truth of it: we never know when an inconvenience is actually placed there conveniently.

It's a few days past Friday now, and we're already into a new week. But I don't think never forget comes with an expiration date. If anything, that's exactly the kind of thing worth carrying into a Monday.

Where do you need reminding this week not to forget?

I hope you consider it as carefully as I do today.

Big hugs & so much love,

Cassy

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