I have come to understand a number of universal truths about my life. You know the type, I am sure. For example, I know that white skirts or pants are only on loan to me from the dry cleaner. I am allowed to wear them once and then, pretty much always, I have to take them back to where they live! It’s a truth for me that, if am going to eat standing up at a party, it had better be the color I am wearing. Making a choice between hungry and soiled, in my world, hungry always wins. It is also a truth that I can skillfully snatch late from the jaws of early every time. If I have extra time (especially in the morning) I can find a hundred ways to fill it, while still convinced I will be early. Convinced, that is, until I am late.

So. I realized another universal truth about my life this week. I realized that my husband and I are incapable of taking a simple or uncomplicated trip. In almost every (if not every) circumstance, we manage to routinely put two unrelated destinations back to back. On countless occasions, we have packed for two totally different kinds of trips in two different climates and, on others, we’ve raced home after travel to one place and flown out the next day again, the pre-packed suitcases for trip two in our hands.

This week we spent time in California at a conference. We added the complexity of a 2-1/2 hour drive from the LA airport to give ourselves more flight options. And we drove back the 2-1/2 hours to LA to fly out to Atlanta, taking our second rental car ride for the day, 3-3/4 hours from Atlanta to Savannah. For each flight of this three flight extravaganza, we were up before 2:30 in the morning and we didn’t stop, even on travel days, before midnight regardless of time zones.

On the plane today, I was thinking about yet another trip, trying to cram three different locations, three different purposes, into one week’s travel. And as I tried to figure out the logistics, and shook my head a bit at the complexity of it all, I realized that I truly wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s a blessing to have friends to visit who are truly family, a blessing to have children and their children who want us to be present, a blessing to have work that leads us to new places and people and learning. And while the truth I recognize is that convoluted is clearly our norm, I recognize the joy of all the ways in which this fills my full heart.