By Delaney Anderson
March 27, 2024
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I’ve encountered travel inconveniences before, but something about this weekend’s events made me grit my teeth. Just as I was stepping off the tram between terminals at the Denver airport, a notification pings my phone: “Your flight has been canceled. Please see the help desk to reschedule.”
About a week prior, I had been traveling from a work conference to visit my cousin. I sent a text to my boyfriend, Taylor, along the lines of “In the airport again and realizing, as I watch very rushed people, that I do not want to live stressed but free! We can’t control the circumstances of life, work, school, or family, but we can choose to live into God’s unchanging character, nearness, and joy!” I wrote it just as effortlessly as I pranced through security with my travel-sized toothpaste!
we can choose to live into God’s unchanging character, nearness, and joy!
A few hours later, as I heard the bell ring and watched the belt circle around a few times at baggage claim, I quickly realized my bag had not completed the journey. I groaned, frustrated. The agent told me it could be there by the next morning. “No problem,” I thought to myself already thinking through the next day.
I called the helpline the next morning, and the morning after that. Still no bag. My cousin responded, “No worries!” and handed me an Ikea-sized bag of her clothes. “I was going to get rid of these anyway,” she admitted.
We can’t control the circumstances of life, but others can help point us back to living in the confidence of Christ and his joy.
On my way home, the Denver International drama unfolded. Multiple flights canceled and quite literally hundreds of people in line for the help desk. It was some combination of the chaos in the terminal, a grumbling stomach, my missing luggage, and realizing I wouldn’t be home for my brother’s birthday that welled up into tears on the phone with my mom. Dramatic, I know. I could tell she hesitated, maybe even held back a chuckle, when she said, “Delaney, you have navigated things much harder than a canceled flight.”
Frustrated and still without a suitcase, I called Taylor and unloaded my misfortune. He responded with “Let me read you a text someone wise once sent me.” And continued, “In the airport again and realizing, as I watch very rushed people, that I do not want to live stressed but free! We can’t control the circumstances of life, work, school, or family, but we can choose to live into God’s unchanging character, nearness, and joy!”
I swallowed my own words.
But isn’t this just how the Holy Spirit works! God prepares our hearts by equipping us with the reminders and strength that we need to embrace challenges.
I learned that not only was my flight canceled but the following day’s departures as well. A couple of texts later, I got a phone call from my aunt who lives outside of Denver: “I am in the car! I’ll be there in an hour!” By the end of the night I was snuggled next to their golden retriever with a newfound peace that I would get home when I needed to and that God was before and behind me in it all. It became all the more clear that God had other plans for how I would start my week—turns out, I liked that version better than mine.
God prepares our hearts by equipping us with the reminders and strength that we need to embrace challenges.
Take this comparatively minimal inconvenience of mine as a sort of “ah ha” moment of my posture towards plans and expectations in this season. As a young adult experiencing a lot of transition, it is easy to gravitate towards control and a tight grip on plans. What a slippery slope!
I can get over the embarrassing and vulnerable tears in the terminal. I can practice releasing expectations. I can ask for God’s grace as I try living open-handedly when things don’t go my way. But I can’t navigate the unexpected circumstances that surface in transition with confidence without being grounded in the unchanging character and nearness of our God. My hope and joy are already determined by the grace of God and the confident hope I have in Christ’s return.
But I can’t navigate the unexpected circumstances that surface in transition with confidence without being grounded in the unchanging character and nearness of our God.
In the months since I have graduated college, my ear has been more and more attuned to the language of “transition” framing aspects of life. There are seemingly more sermons about navigating transitions in community, more conversations with friends about new jobs and time management, more podcasts about the nature of changing friendships, and more phone calls with parents about financial independence. It’s no coincidence the top songs on my Spotify Wrapped playlist had themes of groundedness and lyrics of God’s unchanging character—everything else is changing!
One of those songs is titled “Bless God,” written by Brooke Ligertwood. In the bridge, the song goes
Bless God in the sanctuary
Bless God in the fields of plenty
Bless God in the darkest valley
And she goes on,
Bless God when my hands are empty…
with a praise that costs me…
when nobody’s watching…
when the weapon’s forming…
when the walls are falling…
for he holds the victory…
for he is always with me…
for he is always worthy
Two things dawned on me as I began to memorize the song. One, that means blessing God all the time! And two, what does it mean to bless God? As I started to picture all of those circumstances that Ligertwood names in the song, I imagined just remembering God in that moment—just acknowledging that God’s presence was already present with me. And as I considered my travel misfortune, I realized how different my posture could have been from the very start: rainstorm threatens Santa Barbara, God sees it. Bag lost, God cares. Flight canceled, God hears my frustration. Profoundly, his unchanging nearness and intimate understanding is every reason to bless God.
I imagined just remembering God in that moment—just acknowledging that God’s presence was already present with me.
This is the season that we find ourselves in: Friends move away. Plans you had envisioned don’t go to plan. Student debt creeps in. Post-pandemic realities shed light on a mental health crisis. Media divides and objectifies. Truth is watered down to “mine” and “yours.” And yet, it has become increasingly clear: the more I am reminded of God’s unchanging character, nearness, and joy despite circumstance, the more free I am from the outcomes of the day.
We can know these truths, even say them out loud, and still find ourselves consumed by the temptation to control. Only in complete surrender and submission to Christ do we experience the freedom Jesus calls us into (Galatians 5:1). May your joy and peace be determined by the goodness of God and the personal relationship he invites us into, not by the circumstances of this world.
I don’t know what transition or circumstance feels most turbulent to you in this season, but it may be worth texting yourself a reminder of God’s unchanging character and nearness— you never know when you may be stuck in the Denver airport.
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Delaney Anderson
Delaney Anderson is a Christ-follower who lives and works in Santa Barbara, California. She is a Communications Studies graduate of Westmont College and now serves as the Program Coordinator at the Gaede Institute which houses grants from the Lilly Endowment engaging young adults, local congregations, and church pastors from across the United States. In addition to supporting non-profit Kingdom Causes with digital marketing efforts, she is often outside, on the beach, and being active. Delaney hopes to continue to engage non-profit work in southern California and is further pursuing her hopes of becoming a faith-based counselor.
