Delaying Thanks

I expected my husband home Friday afternoon.
I sent him off last Saturday to a conference.
He rode in a bus with several other men, and to get down,
they drove straight through,
and arrived exhausted about 22 hours after he left me.
Thursday at noon, they began the drive north,
and I got regular texts along the way.
Towards the top of California, he told me they had blown a tire,
and were stuck until the tire shop opened the next morning.

The progress on Friday was slow.
It became more and more clear every hour
that an evening appointment was not going to be met.
They were hot and tired.

At 9:00 that night,
it was finally time to head to the meeting place to pick him up.
I pulled out of my driveway just in time
to see a flaming pink and purple sky behind the distant mountains.
In the other side of the sky hung a supermoon.
The temperature had come down enough
to enjoy the half hour drive in the beauty
I usually am closed up in my house for.
I put the c.d. in my player of two cello players my sister sent me as a gift,
and found myself breathing thanks at this forced pleasure.

I wonder at the seemingly meaningless delays that obstruct us.
Having a young baby,
I am regularly stopped on the side of the road feeding her
because she can't wait.
I try to point the car at something interesting and enjoy the delay.
I don't want to forget to look up when there is something worth seeing.

I was one time traveling to a conference myself
when we inexplicably took the wrong route.
It was a route we had driven before.
There was no excuse for the mistake.
Half an hour or an hour beyond where we should have turned off,
we noticed the mistake, and had to turn around and retrace it.
We were all so disappointed, because we ended up in a horrendous traffic jam.
It took forever, but we finally came upon the cause of the traffic jam.
There was a semi truck and several small cars
scattered and crushed all over the highway.
Recalculating where we would have been if our own timetable had been met,
we all grew quiet as the awareness of God's hand
obstructing our way for our own good sunk in.
I often think of it when I am irritated at obstacles.
Maybe this obstacle is God's provision for my needs.
Maybe this obstacle
is something I will thank Him for when I can see more clearly than I can now.

I don't know why always.
But I have seen Him stop me and thanked Him later more than once.
I might as well look around at the sunset and the supermoon,
and listen to the cellos, and breathe in the spearmint on the evening air
and thank Him now.