Manna and Quail

One of my favorite Biblical characters is Moses. Aside from Jesus himself, he falls right in there with Joseph and Daniel in my ranking. However, one of my least favorite parts of scripture is the section where the Israelites are traveling in the desert, after seeing one miracle after another, and they begin complaining about their hunger. Those whiney Israelites get on my nerves. Funny thing is, it seems as though every time I study the Exodus passages, God shows me some things about my own whiney nature.

Well for those of you who have been reading my blog lately, you may have seen that I am battling my will in that area these days. I have been praying hard that I would be able to see God's goodness in spite of the pressures that we're struggling through right now. Many times in the last few months, I have asked him to show me that he is intimately acquainted with the details of my life. I have needed that stroking a little more often right now than I sometimes do. He, in his precious way, has met my request- not with manna and quail, but in ways that assure me he knows my heart and my every need.

Just today, on our journey to Kansas City, he has done it again. Money has been tighter than usual at our house with Ryan's school issues and we have been trying to cut back anywhere we can. We have been very convicted that we need to be good stewards with every penny. We didn't realize that checked baggage now costs money (don't ask me how we missed that) and we would have each brought a piece to check without a second thought, costing us $100. That's like 5 pairs of shoes for growing feet! But, fortunately, the Lord orchestrated a conversation between Ryan and one of the gals at church this week which made us realized that we needed to check that out. We did, and thankfully, we were able to cram everything into our carry-on roller bags, saving us those fees.

Then, when Ryan booked our flights a couple of months ago, he picked the first flight out, even though we didn't need to be in Kansas City until 6 PM. I scolded him a little bit because I didn't see how a 4 AM departure from Raleigh was going to help our sleep deprived state in any way. We knew we were going to get a rental car for the weekend, after our conference ends on Saturday, so he suggested we just pick it up today instead and we could go touring for an extra afternoon. Which would have been a great idea, except for the fact that it would be more than double the cost to pick the car up on Thursday as opposed to waiting until Saturday. I didn't say much about it, but in my heart I have pouted about an entire afternoon that we would lose waiting in a hotel lobby for nothing.

So, today dawns and I am finally okay with the fact that we are going to be waiting all day long. We climbed onto our first airplane as the sun was coming up this AM and headed off to Cleveland for wait number one. We got there without any problems and found our connecting gate, only to find that it was late. No problem, we're going to wait somewhere, why not the Cleveland airport, right? But, that's when things began to get fun. Turns out, they overbooked our flight and needed 2 folks with flexible travel plans to give up their seats. We looked at each other, smiled, jumped up, and headed for the desk. We quickly volunteered and in exchange, we now have $600 in travel vouchers and they bought our lunch. We had to eat somewhere while we were waiting, right? Too bad manna and quail weren't on the menu.

Just to put the icing on the quail cake, we came to check into our hotel room and found that the internet in our room would be an extra $10 a day. The wi-fi in the lobby, however, is free. Now, that would be fine, EXCEPT for the fact that my husband is currently a slave to liberty.edu and often is up at all hours of the night submitting his deepest academic thoughts. We discussed what to do and decided that he would work on things in the room, and he could just walk to the lobby for the submission part of it. But, lo and behold, out of 11 floors in this hotel, we get assigned to the 2nd, just above the lobby, where the wi-fi signal is good and strong and deep thoughts can be submitted free of charge.

Can't wait to see what sweet surprise comes next!