Greater love.

Photo courtesy of Bippity Boppity Boo.

I get to the Austin airport bright and squirrley.

2-hour delay, no big. Normal.

Then "We're gonna turn around and go back to the gate
because this engine shows signs of being faulty."

Touch down in Chicago.

"Ma-am, you've missed your connection. We got you on the next flight out."

In 3 hours.

Which is delayed 2 hours.

Then a bunch of us miss the gate change because they called it out once.

So they put us going into LaGuardia, and me and my new friend-pack
sprint to L6.

Board.

Wait 40 minutes because one of the flight attendants was delayed in Tulsa.

Land around 2:30 a.m.--but in Newark.

Not LaGuardia. i.e. half the plane is outraged.

Really.

(I'd doubt my intellegenece/competency as a human if it weren't for 10 other humans missing the whole "destination city" thing, too.)

I call the girls, and they drive from Newark to LaGaurdia.
So we can drive to Connecticut.

We get in around 4:45 a.m. and I sleep for a couple of hours.
Back to work.
Oh but wait, my luggage has been shipped to another airport.
No one knows where.

I basically looked like a shacker all day.

Miserable.

** American Airlines, I hope you enjoyed the last business you will ever get from this girl raised on Delta. At least they're nice when they're delayed. Which is well, every Delta flight, but still. They'd have put me in a hotel. No one fly American ever.

God, ya sure lot of craziness to happen, and I kept blinking back tears in my sleep-deprived eyes. Thinking "'Be careful not to complain about anything, even the weather, since I am the Author of your circumstances. The best way to handle unwanted situations is to thank Me for them.' Satan, shove it. Just try to steal my joy. Just try."

Western Connecticut State University

Danbury, Conn.

Eta Omicron Chapter

So all this, on my last visit. Of what they say will be the hardest job I'll ever take. And after a day of meetings yesterday, I trudge back to the little dorm room I'm crashing in.

And see this:

This, accompanied with "You're almost done, Ashlyn!"

Dam broken. Flood gates opened. I bawled, literally, in front of the collegians.

Ha.

Oops.

Someone did that. For me. Someone went and printed off two pictures from my Facebook and put them in frames. No wait, not someone--my sisters did that. Joe Schmoe would tell me "I do not know" the girls I meet. I meet them for the first time in my life when I land. I'm usually gone in less than a week, and I may never see some of them again.

But when I tell them they shouldn't have:

"Ashlyn. Come on. 'I live for you.' It's no big deal. We're sisters."

I mean, how can a sorority consultant argue with her sorority's open motto?
Dangit. They got me on that.
So I laugh.

And sometimes cry.

They live for me.

"Greater love has no one that this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends."

John 15:13

I love it when God uses a Greek organization--what some people consider as the antithesis of Christ following--to bless me. Why. Do. We. Ever. Put. You. In. A. Box...