One Memorable Vacation (but for all the wrong reasons)

Last week was our family vacation. Boy was it memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. We were going to go to Florida for the week to see my parents. This would have entailed taking Jonathan out of school since his spring break is different then our daughter’s break. Unfortunately, the week prior to our scheduled vacation, Jonathan came down with both strep throat and the flu which had him out of school most of the week. This put him behind in his schoolwork and we just weren’t comfortable taking him out of another week of classes. Add to this the fact that Jonathan has one of the lead parts in the school musical at the end of the month and missed several practices while he was sick. To then go away for a week would result in him missing another full week of rehearsals.

As a result, we made the difficult decision to cancel our week’s vacation in Florida and instead to pick up Joy from college in Lynchburg, VA and just go away for a weekend to Virginia Beach. The good part of this ‘Plan B’ was that this shorter trip would be much cheaper and saving money while paying college tuition is always a positive thing. Now here is where things started downhill and ‘Plan B’ turned into ‘Plan C’ and then ‘Plan D’.

After driving 6 hours to pick up Joy at Liberty, we went another 4 hours, arriving in Virginia Beach about 7:30 that evening, hungry and ready for dinner and our hotel. As I began to merge into the lane for our exit I was being careful of traffic merging into the same lane from the opposite side. While glancing over my right shoulder to be sure the lane was clear, I heard my wife scream. I looked up only to see that the traffic getting off of the exit had come to a dead stop. I slammed on the brakes and held them in for everything I was worth but couldn’t stop in time and ran into the rear of the car in front of me who then bumped into the car in front of him (not the actual picture). After driving for 10 hours I got into an accident at our hotel exit. How depressing to stand at the crash site waiting for the state trooper and to be able to see our hotel just a couple hundred yards away. So this cheaper vacation resulted in a $500 deductible, a traffic citation, and increased insurance rates.

I do praise the Lord for a friend in the church who loaded an extra vehicle on his trailer and brought it down to us and took our disabled vehicle back to Lititz. We enjoyed our couple of days in Virginia Beach as best as we could and then headed home. Our plan was to use the rest of our vacation week to spend with our daughter. But then two days after getting home, right in the middle of our week of vacation, my mom called me from Florida to let me know that my grandma had passed away that morning. This was my last surviving grandparent. I have already preached my other three grandparent’s funerals and this week I will be going to Florida to preach her funeral as well. I will tell you more about my Grandma William’s spiritual journey in my blog posting tomorrow.

So last week’s family vacation went completely different than what was planned. During the week I saw this sign in a store…“Life is all about how well you handle ‘Plan B’.” We had ‘Plan A’ all sorted out for vacation but quickly found ourselves dealing with “Plan B, C and D’. How glad I am that whatever plan it ultimately is, God is still in control.