Ponderings

Note from Amy: I love including reflections from our community on the Incarnation blog. After hearing Shari reflect on her recent trip, I asked her to share a written reflection, and she graciously agreed. I hope you enjoy her "ponderings" (as she called them) below as much as I did. And thank you — so many of you — for the many prayers prayed over her trip!

Mont St-Michel, from childhood dream to recent reality. All photos in this post by Shari Hughes.

My mother died almost two years ago. Some of you may remember my plea for prayers to cover my hurried and harried flight back to Kansas on July 19, 2024, a day when all across the country so many airlines’ computers failed, and many flights were delayed or outright cancelled. My mother was dying, but my sister had promised her that I was on my way. My mother waited, and then died the following day, knowing that all of her children were present.

The following February, I received a letter from a life insurance company notifying me that I was a named beneficiary in my mother’s policy. If I could provide satisfactory identification and a death certificate, the company would send me a check. The amount of that bequest wasn’t specified, however. Would it be enough for a new pair of shoes? a really nice restaurant meal? a trip somewhere? I knew where I’d go if it was a respectable amount, but I had to wait three more weeks to find out. 

When I realized that my mother’s gift was enough to give me some nice travel time, I started making plans to go to France. I had wanted to visit Mont St-Michel ever since I’d seen a photo of it in my high school French book, and when I consulted a map of France, I saw that the mystical island abbey wasn’t far from the Normandy WWII beaches, where a family member had fought on June 6, 1944. And then another look at the map showed that the small town of Giverny (the longtime and final home of my favored painter Claude Monet) was just outside Paris - the gateway to my destinations in Normandy. Click! I had the inkling of a plan. Over the next year, I discovered a variety of consultants and experts from whom I would uncover facts, opinions, and observations in order to bring this plan to fruition.

On May 4th, just a few weeks ago and nearly eleven months after I’d begun making my plans, I boarded a nonstop flight from Dulles to Paris. My plan was to spend two days in Paris, including a day trip to Giverny, and then go to the Normandy coast to tour the D-Day beaches and spend some time at Mont St-Michel before returning to Paris for a few days of sightseeing and my return to Dulles on May 15th. My last full day in Paris, May 14, was my mother’s birthday.

At a recent gathering of friends, I was asked what I’d learned about myself during this whole process.

I learned, first of all, that God is indeed interested in the everyday things that we think about and dream about, and that he is ever present in our lives. It is true that he gives us the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4), not that he necessarily fulfills the things that we wish for, but that he plants those desires in the first place and then can be counted on to support those desires.

Second, I learned that my resources and my support can be found in many places, both in human experience and in established protocols.

And, third, I learned that if I’m paying attention to Godly wisdom and prompts, if I’ve done my homework, and if I keep my eyes and ears open, I can glean much more than I’d ever thought possible.

I’ve read many comments from my Facebook travel pages about people who go to places they’ve been told they ought to go, see things they ought to see, and do things they ought to do, but I had a particular vision for just a few things that were personally meaningful, and everything else was just icing on the cake, so to speak. But boy, oh boy, what a cake that was.

I learned about trust and confidence and courage and planning and flexibility. I learned about determination in pursuing an objective, and I learned how to let go of things (concepts, impressions, and items on To Do lists) that really didn’t matter in the long run.

And I learned that while I am more than who I thought I was, I am also less than who I thought I was. The travel was not so much, after all, a calendar of personal objectives as it was the fleshing out of wonder and promise.

Dear Reader, may you continue to hold on to (or continue to remember) the dreams and desires that God has put in your hearts and reflect on the realizations that he has brought about. As I read in one of Brennan Manning’s books, “The Father of Jesus is awfully fond of me” — and he is also fond of you, and you, and you!

~ Shari Hughes