To all of my readers, and all who recently have sent comments, I want to apologize for the fact that I’ve answered so few of you. I love your thoughts and input, whether we agree or not. Although I’m a fairly new blogger, your encouragement, kindness, even your criticism, make this effort a great, wonderful adventure.
Thank you for everything! Thank you for your stories, your questions, your anger, your honesty and your affirmations. For all those I’ve never contacted in response, thanks to you also. I’ll keep trying to get to all my readers as I develop a little more efficiency in my life. I write this blog, but also write for the Greenville News and Emergency Medicine News. I’m woefully behind in all my correspondence with readers.
This is for a couple of reasons. First, I’m notoriously disorganized. My office looks very much like an explosion in my eighth grade locker at Beverly Hills Junior High School. Second, after spending time writing and making a living in the emergency department, I really try my best not to shortchange my wife or children on my time. The world of writing, blogging and responding can be all-consuming and I try to have balance. Please don’t be offended if I haven’t written back. I appreciate you deeply, but have to weigh my time spent writing with the needs of my family.
Third: last Tuesday, while on the way to speak at the Focus on the Family Medical conference, my wife and four children and I were stranded in Dallas by the American Airlines recalls. For three days we had cancellations, and lived in a hotel several miles from the airport, without our luggage.
If it sounds nightmarish, it actually wasn’t. It was a delightful time of impromptu vacation. I would have missed my family while at the conference; I would have been in meetings from Wednesday through Saturday. I dreaded the thought, as much as I anticipated the conference and the inspiration I knew it would offer.
God gave us all a break from the constant press of daily life. We went to a bookstore, watched movies, played in the pool, played basketball. We ate dinner, and we fell asleep each night together, learning not to fear, learning to have faith, even as our flights were canceled and tornadoes swept through Texas. It was a grand family lesson in the way things don’t always work out the way we want, but generally work out better than we could have imagined.
To the folks at American Airlines, thank you! To the folks at the Homewood Suites in Grapevine Texas, thank you! To my wife and children, I love you now and always. And to God, our travel agent, my deepest gratitude of all.
So, I’m sorry if I haven’t written; I’ll keep doing my best. Thanks for reading! And if you’re stuck in an airport, now or in the future, remember that it may not be the worst thing in the world.
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