Untangling the Knots
When I moved, I had a brilliant idea to hang my necklaces and chains on a couple of hangers with a plastic bag pulled on from the bottom up. Or so I thought it was a brilliant idea. Not so much. I’m still untangling the tangled!
And there are many of us whose lives are all tangled up in knots. I experienced those knots in a personal way on Saturday when my two grandsons and their friend, Jack, were my travel companions back home. All was going well on the first leg of our flight from Cabo to LA. We had a 2-1/2 hour layover so no concern at all to leave the terminal to be picked up by Jack’s sister, Emma, who is an actress in LA, along with their grandparents to visit for a while. We knew that we would have to go through customs going outside the airport. We mastered that little necessary check-through as we only had to look at a camera and we were through. Not even a need for our passports. We had a great visit and then we were brought back to the terminal, went through security again without a hitch with plenty of time to spare. We felt like pros at this. Great flight home with no interruptions and arrived on time in Austin. Our Uber driver was waiting for us and our baggage.
BUT…..that’s when things got all tangled up. We watched traveler after traveler pick up their bags and be on their way…..but, alas, none of our bags showed up. We went to the luggage agent and she had a sheet of paper with our names on it. Our luggage was still in LAX, but why? In all our excitement to exit the airport and visit with friends, we failed to claim our bags (a requirement at customs) and then send them on through to Austin. OH ME! The luggage lady advised that they would probably be on a flight in the morning to Austin.
That wouldn’t have been so much concern, but none of our bags were locked. The boys had computers in theirs and so did I! My trusty computer that I use to type my blogs and have ready for each morning! AND my bag also included a pouch of pieces of precious jewelry from my husband. Angst hit me and stayed with me all night long. I would wake up and pray for protection but my tummy was still tangled all up in knots.
Perhaps you relate because there’s a jumble of knots going on in your world. Each knot represents a problem, and the process of untangling those knots and straightening out those problems takes time and effort. It took a flight home to tie those knots up in my tummy and maybe a long time to tie all those knots in your life and it will take some time to straighten them all out.
But, here’s how I made it through the night of tangles. The thought of loss would come and I would quote “Him I will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Me” (Isaiah 26:3) and I would do my best to focus on saying the name of Jesus and allowing my “trust” factor to grow. I kept untangling the mistakes I made and gave them to God to untangle. I asked for forgiveness for my weakness. I fell back to sleep but still awoke to those “tangles”!
I wanted those bags asap because that’s the way we are – expecting everything to be quick and easy. God never gets in a hurry. He never quits or runs out of patience. I believe He uses these times to school us and equip us for living tangle-free lives or at least to give us the tools we need to get our messes untangled.
My story has a happy ending. After church, I received a text message that our six bags were enroute to my home. Thanks be to God for all six bags with all contents intact. Once again, the Master Detangler untangled the mess I made. My necklaces? Well, they are still undergoing being untangled. And, maybe your tangled messes are still being untangled. Oh, Lord, please give us more patience RIGHT NOW! But, in case “right now” isn’t now yet….we surrender all those messes to You. From personal experience, I know that my best self shows up when God teaches me another lesson of trusting, obeying, staying in peace, and always believing He’s got these tangled pieces of our lives and is untangling them in His way for our good.