Truth Moment:

This post is a little more personal in nature, so I wanted to start this post off with a one-time disclaimer. In my introduction post, I stated that I would be as authentic and transparent as much as I could possibly be throughout my blog. With that being said, whenever I have a #truthmoment, I am not looking for sympathy, empathy, kudos, or pity. I just want to be as honest as I can, and sometimes in life, things can get a tad bit sketchy, my hope is that I learn a lesson out of the moment, and hopefully you can learn something from my experience as well. Now these lessons that I learned is not some huge new thing, but when something happens personally to you, you can understand these “life messages” more clearly. First I will tell you a snippet of my experience, then I will tell you what I have learned.

So my sister, my 2 kids and I have an early Monday morning flight (6:30AM) back home to Houston from Los Angeles, CA, and we get a text/email that our flight has been canceled and rescheduled to the next day at 5:30AM. We get in contact with an agent, and get our flight rescheduled to 7:03PM (yes I’m being specific) for Monday night. We get to the airport nice and early at 4:00PM, and await our 7:03 flight. First they delay the flight, 30 minutes, then an hour, then they come back and let us know that due to weather conditions in another city, our plane cannot get to LA, and they cannot find another plane or crew to take us back to Houston. So basically our flight was canceled. They tell us go to customer service or/and call their 800 number to get the flight rescheduled. I then go stand in this 3-hour line, and call their 800 number. After being on hold for 2 hours 38 minutes and 3 seconds, the nice gentleman in front of me (who was only on hold for 1 and a half hours mind you), lets me speak with the agent when he was done. So we basically get a flight leaving Tuesday (the next day) at 2:00PM. Now mind you it’s 11:00PM, I’m at the airport with my sister and my 2 kids, and they are basically telling me that they can’t get us out of here until 15 hours later. Then when I finally get to the front of the 3-hour line, I am told that United will not be accommodating a room for the night nor providing any food vouchers. They did tell me that they have cheap hotel rooms nearby, and gave us a number to call, and the cheapest room would be $60, and the shuttle buses had already stopped running for the night, so if I booked the room I would also have to take a cab or Uber to get there. I could get into a whole tangent about United Airlines and their customer service, or a lack of it, but not that’s not what this post is about. I just want you to understand my mind frame at the time: It’s 11:00PM, our flight will not leave for another 15 hours, my kids, my sister, and myself have not eaten since this morning, I only have $40 to my name, I’m going to have to pay additional fees for my car being parked at the airport longer (United will not accommodate this either), and we are going to have to sleep in this airport overnight, and I don’t have any way to get back to the place where I was staying. Now to some people, this may not be such a big thing, but for me, I was HUGE, and I was truly. As I sat up at 3AM keeping an eye out on our belongings, I started to ponder through a ton of things, I will share 3 of them with you:

1. The first thing I wanted to say is to ALWAYS Follow your first mind-The devil never had a first thought, when your heavenly father speaks to you, it’s the devils job to oppose. Okay so another truth moment….So I’m in my shower, balling crying, literally breaking down, because I cannot afford to go on this trip to California. I have a ton of things that I have to handle for my household and the cost associated with this trip is just not feasible for me at this time. Then in a moment of clarity in the shower, my mind tells me to notify my family, that as much as I would love to be there with them and share the holidays with them, I just cannot afford it at this time. But did I listen??? No I didn’t! I started to worry about the questions that my family will ask me, and the look on my kids face when I tell them that we are not going. I truly learned, that when you are in a position of clarity, you must, must, must, follow that thought, because when you have a breakdown, the body and mind will go into self-save mode and clarity is born. Worrying about what others may say, think, and feel, is not even in the equation at this time. When you ignore that clarity moment, your mind will not let you forget that “it told you so”.  Listen to yourself! Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoyed being with my family, but at several times during my trip, I was mindful at the fact that I should have followed my first mind.

2.  The next thing is to strive for Financial Freedom-I will never forget, when I first signed up to the social media platform Periscope, and I saw a live broadcast from Nicole “Scoprah” Walters, and she was in an airport with a canceled flight, and she would be stuck at that location overnight. She talked about the fact that a lot of people that was on her flight, was scrounging and scrambling around to make plans for this flight cancellation and preparations for this unexpected overnight stay. I will never forget her saying that the fact that she was financially free, she was able to reserve a hotel room for herself and order room service and be comfortable until her flight the next day. That message from her has always stuck with me, and it’s funny how I found myself in that same predicament, yet I was on the other end of the spectrum.  Here I am with $40 to my name, 2 hungry kids, nowhere to go, stuck in an airport for what would be 22 hours. Now granted, in the end, my sister and I may have concluded that “paying for a hotel room doesn’t make sense right now, let’s just stay at the airport that way if an earlier flight becomes available, we’ll be here”. The difference is (a)having a choice to make the decision vs (b) being forced into a situation out of desperation and no other choices. Even before this situation happened, I knew I had to make a change with my relationship with money, but this just solidified my conviction to make better choices and sacrifice to have that financial freedom.

3.   Lastly I learned that Funny Things Can Happen in a Time of Crisis-I will make this last one short and sweet. Here I am stressed out, worried, angry, and regretful, and as I am tucking my daughter into her bed/chairs, she says to me “mama this was fun, I want to do this again!” (my son later said the he had a great time as well) It took a moment for that to sink in for me, but as I started to ponder, on it a calmness came over me, and all of that anxiety that I had just went away. Don’t get me wrong, would I rather to be in someone’s hotel room eating room service? Uh Yeah!!! It’s just the fact that my kids took this experience as something positive that they actually enjoyed, made me realize that 1. A “crisis” is not the end of the world. 2. Your kids are more resilient than you give them credit for. And 3. Use every moment in life as a teaching moment, learn the lesson, and adjust accordingly. We won’t always be prepared for life’s changes, but it’s what you make of it and what you take away from it that makes all the difference.

Well guys that’s my 3 lessons, I know this was little bit lengthy, and it took me a few days to write, because I wanted to write this with as much integrity and pride as possible. I hope these lessons provokes thought with you, it definitely did for me. If you have any life lessons that you have learned and adapted that you’d like to share, please do so in the comments below. Until next time, I’m signing off, OSM