Supersoaker

When you think of visiting Australia, you think of the beach and the outback and hiking and warm sunny weather – especially in the summer months. But we haven’t been so lucky. In our 10 days here, we have seen only 3 days of sun and made it to the beach just twice, with only one of those days being sunny enough to actually touch the water.

Sounds like a pretty downer of a trip, right? Wrong. This brief stint in Sydney has been amazing thus far. Life doesn’t always hand you ideal situations; sometimes instead of getting 90 and sunny, you get supersoaked in weather that’s 70 and rainy with 90% humidity and no recollection of the last time you saw the sun. In addition to that, I did not plan on missing TCU and my fellow Horned Frogs as much as I do.

But that’s not always a bad thing - Because when you miss your old home, you try even harder to build a new home. Sometimes your feeling of being out of place allows you to find your niche at the activities fair by joining the boxing club, talking to Buddhist monks, and playing limbo for a free printer. Sometimes that rainy weather allows you to share stories and experiences with the amazing friends you’ve met. Sometimes you get stuck inside playing cards for hours, getting to know each other. Sometimes instead of seeing the surf competition you traveled an hour for, you get to watch the skateboarding and BMX finals at the beach instead because surfing was canceled for the day. Sometimes you hop on the first train you see, discover amazing fried chicken well outside the city limits, and get lost on the way back, walking a few kilometers back through the rain.

Despite not having amazing weather, I have gathered amazing stories and experiences and friendships. In fact, just this morning I booked an April trip to Bali with 3 people I have barely known a week. That’s insane. I committed to spending over a week with people I have known for only a week. But that’s the amazing part of unfortunate circumstances, sometimes plans don’t hold through.

Regardless of your faith, you can acknowledge a greater force in the world that throws us a beneficial wild card sometimes. My life has never really gone according to plan. I did not plan on going to TCU, nor did I plan on studying abroad in Sydney; I definitely did not plan on having a week of overcast, rainy weather. But here I am nonetheless, enjoying every moment of it. God has done some truly amazing things in my life, but I am always in awe of how His plan supersedes mine. He knows exactly what He’s doing - which is great to know, because I definitely do not.

Thankfully, I have learned to let go of the plan; I have learned to roll with the punches and quickly turn my beach plans into market and Chinatown and cards and fried chicken plans. I will always make plans and prepare, as shown by our trip to Bali. But when my plans don’t go according to plan, I’m ready to wander the streets of Sydney with my amazing new friends while getting incredibly supersoaked