Words: Safe Passage, Part 2

So, about The Worst Bible Bowl Trip in History:

*First, we had to rent vans, because the church vans were in use.

*At the last minute, I was pulled in as a sponsor because one of the other women wasn't able to go.

*Then, Rebecca had to endure my panic attack at being one of the listed drivers on the rental van, when I had NO intention of getting behind the wheel of that van AT ALL. (That one was quickly resolved.)

*After that, we had about a 10-minute window to leave on time to get to our destination and pulled out of the parking lot of South Plains with approximately .005 nanoseconds to spare.

*We ran into a zero-visibility (not kidding) dust storm halfway between Lubbock & Abilene and had to slow down considerably, which used up every one of our .005 nanoseconds.

*And the final blow: We arrived in Abilene to discover that the only available hotel rooms were, erm, rather low-rent. (Unfortunately, all pics from this trip were lost when our old computer crashed.) So, we slept in smoke-scented hotel rooms in a questionable neighbourhood. (And my bedtime prayer freaked out the girls in my room, because I prayed for our safety. Oops!)

After such an eventful Friday, one of our girls lost her glasses Saturday morning. And the hotel had no breakfast on offer, so we packed into a McDonald's. When we arrived at the church for competition, Rebecca ordered me to come to the coaches' meeting while the rest of the adults did crowd control with our kids. (Okay, this was a low point only for me.)

Boring meeting... boring meeting... boring meeting... and then the gentleman leading the prayer wound up by asking that God would grant us all "safe passage" home. Now to my half-crazed brain, one uses the word "passage" only when sailing.

So after the "Amen", I turned to Rebecca and asked, "Are we going home by ship?"

She laughed for five minutes, then said, "Thank you, I needed that."

So, Safe Passage. Great phrase. Memories of weekend plans gone awry. Good friends to share them with.