How to React to Life's Unexpected Turns

Have you ever noticed that no matter how carefully you plan, life has a way of taking unexpected turns?  Last Wednesday my daughter and I spent the night in Helsinki, Finland, the last place on earth I would have expected to visit. We had just the clothes on our backs. No pyjamas. No toiletries.

A bus stop in Helsinki

My husband and son were travelling from Turkey to the United States on a different airline, and we planned to meet up in New York City to spend a day sightseeing before we continued our trip home together.  I was excited because I’ve dreamed about going to New York City all my life. We planned our day carefully: Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Broadway, and Lombardi’s pizzeria.

The first hint that things were not going as planned came when we checked in for our flight.
The computer showed a different itinerary than the one on my e-ticket. The airlines agent struggled for one hour to print tags for our luggage, and she could only give me boarding passes for the first leg of our trip, so I’d have to check in again during our 50 minute layover in Helsinki. We had to  run to catch our flight out of Izmir, and to make a long story short, after a second harrowing run through the Helsinki airport, we missed our flight, but our bags went on to New York.

Tears welled up in my eyes at the prospect of looking for a hotel in Helsinki and missing our day of sightseeing in New York, but during lunch with my daughter at the airport, I decided to laugh. Spending a night in Helsinki with no pyjamas and no toothpaste had better be funny, or else I’d start crying.  Funnier still was the fact that my husband and son were on their way to New York with a suitcase full of souvenirs and home school supplies.  Their clothes were in our luggage.

Life is full of unplanned surprises.  How can we handle unexpected twists and turns?

Trust that God is in control.

He’s with us every step of the way, even when things don’t go as planned.  Getting upset about things I can’t change doesn’t help my situation.  Remembering God’s care for me helps me relax.

Look on the bright side.

My daughter and I decided that rather than being miserable, we would make the best of things and look at it as an adventure.  When in our lives would we ever have the chance to be in a Nordic country and see such wonderful pine trees and huge snow drifts?

Adjust your expectations.

When things go differently than I expect or hope for, I often remember this word from Joyce Meyer: “Adjust your expectations.”  Decide that you can still enjoy your day. You can still enjoy life.

Laugh.

Give thanks anyway.

This is my attempt at handling life’s glitches.  How about you? What helps you to stay positive when things go wrong?