Floyd and I were both in the United States Air Force. We met and got married while we were stationed in England. The following July, Floyd took leave, so we could go to the States on vacation with our three-month-old son, Toby. That way, I could meet Floyd’s family. He could meet my family, and everyone could see the baby. We prayed about making the trip.
Even back in 1980, commercial flights could be expensive, whereas a military hop cost $10 a seat. However, military hops were “Space Available” flights, and they were filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. If we went to the airport on Saturday to get our name on the list, Floyd’s leave time had to start that day, and he didn’t want to be charged leave for a day that he already had off, so he started his leave on Monday. That gave us the weekend to pack. But even while we packed, we didn’t know if we were going. We had prayed and asked the LORD to provide us a military hop out of Mildenhall AFB on Monday. If we didn’t catch a flight on Monday, we would know that God didn’t want us to go at this time, and we would just come home.
Early Monday morning, we drove to Mildenhall and added our names to the bottom of the long list. Shortly after 12:00 noon, they started calling names for a commercial plane with a lot of empty seats. It was heading for New Jersey. A guy from Floyd’s squadron had been at the airport for three days, hoping to catch a weekend flight. He boarded the same flight that we did. We paid for Toby to have his own seat, so we didn’t have to hold him the entire eight-hour flight. He slept great on the seat between us. There were couples on that plane that didn’t want to pay an additional $10, so they held their toddler or preschooler the entire flight.
When we departed the plane in New Jersey, the heat rushed in to greet us, and we started stripping right there in the airport. Off came coats and sweatshirts. (It was always cold in England. Floyd said he could wear thermals there year round.) We caught a bus to Marquette, Michigan, where we picked up Floyd’s Ford F150 from a friend of his and headed to Northern Wisconsin to see his parents. His fifth-wheel trailer was parked at his folks’ place. We hooked it to Floyd’s super-cab pickup and took off for California to see my family. We were on the road for a month, visiting our families as we covered miles of Interstate with Floyd’s truck and trailer.
Since we hadn’t flown commercially, Floyd planned for us to get back to New Jersey four days early. That would give us a few days to catch a hop back to Mildenhall and allow us time to book a commercial flight should we not be able to catch a military hop. Floyd had to be back on base by a certain day or he was AWOL, so timeliness on that return flight was crucial.
Well, there were about fifty people on the list ahead of us . And we didn’t dare leave the airport (like to catch a motel for the night) because if they called our number while we were gone, we lost our place in line. So we hung around the airport waiting…and waiting…and waiting as one day melted into another. Floyd and I were getting cranky and irritable. We were constantly getting on each others nerves. That led us to do the unthinkable. We started grumbling and complaining. We were worse than the children of Israel. I’m sure that God was very displeased with us; not only for our complaining, but for our lack of faith.
Well, on the fourth day, Floyd and I went outside for awhile. It was a beautiful day – sunny and warm. We sat down on the greet lawn to relax, and we set the baby on a blanket to play. Then we discussed our attitudes and actions. Holding hands, Floyd and I prayed, asking God to forgive us for our ingratitude and purposing in our hearts to trust Him. That greatly lightened our hearts.
A short awhile later, we headed back into the airport building to see if there were any new developments or if we needed to purchase a couple of commercial airline tickets for our return trip. They were calling numbers. Of course, they were only in the 20’s and our numbers were in the 70’s. They called number after number after number. They flew right through the 70’s into the 80’s and then onto the 90’s. They had an empty airplane that had to return to Mildenhall, so they were going to fill it with people needing a flight back. Had Floyd and I simply had as much faith in God for our return trip as we had for our initial flight, we would have planned our return trip for that day; because we had to leave that day to get Floyd back to base on time. Jesus must have said to us, “Oh, ye of little faith.”