Shanghai-ed Perspective

My trip here could be deemed by some as disastrous. Having a long, unexpted delay in an international airport where almost nobody speaks English does indeed sound like a nightmare, but I came away with a great lesson, as opposed to a purely frustrating memory.

This is the version of the story that I’m tempted to tell, that I think is the natural reaction to the circumstances:

1. We had a VERY long flight from Seattle to Shanghai.
2. Our flight from Shanghai to Chongqing was indefinitely delayed (scheduled to leave at 9 pm, didn’t leave until 1 am).
3. We had to stay in an extremely cheap hotel (think China version of Motel 6).

4. We couldn’t get the 9 a.m. flight out the next morning; we had to wait until 12:30.
5. We missed the first day of the build.

Now, in a me-focused world, this recounting makes total sense. All the ways I was inconvenienced. All the suffering I had to deal with. It’s all about me, myself, and I. Let’s try telling this story again, but with a different perspective (storyline points correspond)

1. This felt like one of the fastest flights I’ve ever been on; it went quickly and I was surprised we got there when we did.
2. We were stuck in an airport that just happened to have a hotel as part of its complex!
3. The hotel initially had no rooms, but after 10 minutes in the lobby with the four of us scanning the web and making calls for a different hotel, the concierge called me back to the desk and told me that some of their guests had just cancelled, and they had two two-bed rooms available.
4. It took us 2 hours to recover our bags from the previous airline for our final flight; something we hadn’t anticipated beforehand, which would have meant we would have missed a 9 a.m. flight. As it was, we got our bags, got to our gate, and had minimal waiting time before we took off. (And I wouldn’t have gotten to ride with this little guy… we became good friends via peekaboo…)

5. The first day was very uneventful, which meant we just had a whole extra day to adjust to the time zone with almost no negative impact to the team.

I was just reading this morning the comparison of a Worldview to glasses – how we view the things that happen around us. If Jesus really has changed my life (and my worldview), it ought to impact how I view things. I didn’t sugar-coat any of the items in the second recounting, I simply looked at things from a different perspective. I had a God up in heaven who had my best interest in mind. Even if I couldn’t understand at the time why we couldn’t get a 9 a.m. flight, God did know; before I got frustrated, I need to trust that God had a reason for this to occur.

So let's take that selfish, me-centric view and ship it off to Shanghai with no chance to return, because with every little inconvenience, discomfort, and frustration we come across, we can leave it up to Him – we never know what He has in store.