Greetings from TGI Friday’s at DFW International Airport. I’m on my way to Florida; three days with two of my very best girlfriends, and a week with the grandbabies.

Color me ecstatic.

It’s pretty busy here this morning, probably having to do with it being a Friday and the last weekend of summer for a lot of Texas towns. My man dropped me off good and early (just the way I like it), and while it started that way because he had to get to a meeting, it turned out to be a really GREAT thing because I got hung up in security.

I know you’ll find this shocking, but I typically am not pegged as a threat. In fact, I’m usually the kind of person the TSA WANTS to fly the friendly skies, so squeaky-clean a person am I. Because I am such a rule follower, I usually sail through those security lines with my 3 oz. liquids in their quart-size Ziploc bags, and my laptop, lonely, in its own x-ray tub. Truly, I am a model traveler.

Except this morning I was wearing an orthopedic boot. Yes, it’s true. I’m back in the stupid boot from last fall, due to a stress fracture.

Color me annoyed.

The TSA folks told me I could leave the boot on, so I did. They swiped it and put the little swab in the little machine and it gave a little beep. Well, it was actually a BIG beep, which called people, from other far points of security, to action. They whisked me away to another location, where I was told to remove the boot and given an explanation of the finer points of a full pat-down. There was a discussion of the inner and outer thigh, and where their hands would be in conjunction with the more personal regions of my body.

Color me dazed and confused.

Fortunately, I passed the pat-down, although I may have to seek counseling after such a violation. Let’s just say that it’s a good thing that the TSA agent seemed embarrassed, too. I strapped my betrayer back on my foot and grabbed my personal items from the x-ray buckets, and headed here to Friday’s, thinking all the way.

We put our trust in a lot of things. We consider a thing for what we know about it, for what we believe to be true about it, then, often, we go all in. We strap it on and hide in its protection, and just when we settle into the comfort of it, it’s tested. And it comes up short. We don’t understand how it has let us down, this thing that seemed so sure. We are left vulnerable and unsure.

Then we discover Someone bigger. Greater. More trustworthy than the betrayer. He redeems us and sets us right, back on the path for which we were intended, and we sigh in relief.

Just like me, sitting here in Friday’s.

Color me thankful.

“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.” Psalm 118:8 ESV

“Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God,  turn your backs on the world’s “sure thing…” Psalm 40:4 MSG