the trip of a lifetime

Did you hear? Daniel and I spent 2 weeks back in September in beautiful Hawaii with my sister and brother-in-law. Sissy and Josh are currently stationed on Oahu at Schofield Barracks until June 2015. Let me just say: I do NOT feel bad for their living there especially since it is so beautiful!

The weeks leading up to our trip felt just like any other time, nothing extraoradinary. I don’t think it truly sunk in that I was headed to Hawaii until we were about 3 hours into our last flight over the Pacific from LAX headed to Honolulu. At this point, I was ready to be off the plane and not sandwiched between Daniel and a stranger, which was the story of the 2 of the 3 flights for that day. I spent the evening before our departure cleaning and packing so I didn’t get much sleep…maybe 2 hours sleep? Daniel’s dad drove us to the airport around 3:30AM in order to catch our 5:30AM flight to Chicago from Birmingham. Then it was Chicago to LAX and LAX to Honolulu. We landed around 3:45PM Hawaii time, which was 8:45PM Birmingham time. Yes, over 15 hours of traveling is exhausting.

When we landed, we hustled it to baggage claim to meet Sis. (Josh was back at the house cooking hamburgers. Yum!) It was a sweet reunion, and I wish we had a few more minutes during that time to cry and hug before Daniel corralled us to get our bags. Fifteen months is a long time for Sis and me to not see each other. We were each other’s best friends. We are just 18 months and 13 days a part so I never really remember a time in my life when I was the only child. Living so far away from her has been really hard on me. It wasn’t until after we had flown back home and got back into our daily routine that I began to notice just how great our two weeks in Hawaii really were.

I say this to everyone who asks me how Hawaii was. It was absolutely indescribably amazing and for Daniel and me to spend it with Josh and Sissy, it truly was a trip of a lifetime. Now, it wouldn’t be a Brindley girls’ gathering if there wasn’t an argument or two, because hey, that’s what sisters do. However, there were a lot of laughs, sweating (especially from the “30 minute” hike that turned into 2.5 hours!), picture-taking, shopping, eating (galore! Daniel and I each gained 10 pounds while we were there and not from Sissy’s cooking), and the list goes on. Daniel and I were blessed to see our 50th state like most wouldn’t be able to. We went on a few hikes, line-danced, swam with a dolphin and sharks, paid our respects to the ones who made the ultimate sacrifice on 12/7/1941, surfed the Pacific, attended a luau, and so many more things that I can’t think of right now. We experienced Hawaii like a true local.

Our Hawaii trip taught me more about myself than I have learned since my college days. There are things and certain situations that arise in life where time is the only answer. I’ve always been a person to “fix” things especially things that I could control. God taught me that there is a whole world to see, explore, and discover and I am wasting time by trying to control things that He has already taken care of. He has a plan for my life, which is not a life of worry. Psalm 37:8 says “do not fret- it leads only to evil”. As soon as I read that verse, I almost fell out of my chair. I’ve always heard that worrying is calling God a liar, because I am not fully trusting Him. But to read that verse about worrying leads to evil…wow! That got my attention.

Not only was this trip a self-discovery trip for Leslie, but Daniel and I learned so much about each other and our marriage. I’ve always known that he is the rock, but this trip exemplified it that much more. He pushed me to do things out of my comfort zone and I think I surprised him by doing things that I normally wouldn’t do without his asking. And after we made the long trek back home, he was still there to help me through my post-Hawaii trip depression. As silly as it sounds, I had a rough time getting back to feeling like myself after our trip. For about 2 weeks, I was not my usual "Leslie" self. After days of soul searching, I realized that I was suffering from post-Hawaii trip blues. It was hard to leave a vacation of that magnitude and come back home to our "simple" life again. It was then that Daniel and I decided to get plugged into a church. And that is when the next chapter of our life started to take off…