A Week of Beautiful Things

Hi friends!  This finds me at a wobbly table in a little food court area at LaGuardia Airport.  Sleepinginairports.net tells me that sleeping in LaGuardia is like sleeping in a dirty bus terminal, but as of 10:00pm it hasn’t been bad!  So far I’ve charged my phone, brushed my teeth, plucked my eyebrows, and lost my water bottle.  In the next few hours, I hope to eat a snack, find my water bottle, read a book, and write this post.

From where I sit, I see about a dozen other travelers scattered singly at tables for two or four.  Some are eating soup or sandwiches from Au Bon Pain (the only restaurant open all night), many are on laptops or phones, and a couple folks are just looking around listlessly. A few half-hearted Christmas garlands are hung from the ceiling, and light jazz is pumping through the loudspeaker.  This place will work just fine.  But let’s think of more beautiful things.

Beautiful Thing #1:  My friend got married. 

A few years ago, I went to a wedding where the bride and groom were in their mid to late thirties.  One of the first things the pastor said was, “Our God is an on-time God.”  Then he paused and let that idea sink in for a little while before continuing the message.  As I celebrated my friend’s marriage, that phrase came to mind.  My friend and her husband had trusted God for many years to provide for them.  And God wasn’t late, He didn’t forget about His kids, He wasn’t powerless to bring together the right people at the right time, and He wasn’t stingy with His blessings. 

So it was fun to celebrate God’s goodness, and spend some time with my friend, and visit NYC.  Woohoo!

Beautiful Thing #2:  I went traveling with my family.

Thanks to my brother’s love of travel deals, he heard of a good miles deal to Turks & Caicos islands.  So my family gathered up a bunch of frequent flyer miles and got ourselves some tickets to the Caribbean. 

My highlights included spending time together, snorkeling, sitting on the beach, and seeing two rainbows and four sunsets over the water.  (My two-year-old niece’s highlights were playing with her grandma and grandpa, playing with her stuffed cats, “washing” sand by throwing handfuls of it into a bucket of water, and destroying every sand castle we tried to help her build.)

I would definitely recommend Turks & Caicos to any of my travel-loving friends.  I’ve never seen such blue water, and it was clear all the way down.  I could tread water and see the ridges of the sand twenty feet below as distinctly as if I was looking through tap water.  Check the photos.

Beautiful Thing #3:  Is about to happen.  Snack time. :)