One of my jobs was to raise funds for scholarships for the national United Methodist Church. To connect with churches and donors, I traveled extensively. I was literally from Alaska to Florida and California to Maine. Obviously, my travel involved stay at a number of hotels.

It happened often when I came to check in to the hotel, the desk clerk would be busy doing something and would say to me, “Just a minute.” Now I don’t know exactly what they were doing, but I’m guessing it wasn’t brain surgery or something that required their undivided attention. When the wait was extensive, I would send a nicely worded email to the manager suggesting that great customer service would make welcoming the new guest and efficiently checking them into the hotel as their only priority. Then the desk clerk could return to their brain surgery.

I was an interruption to their day.

My wife and I decided we needed to get away from winter for a bit, so we scheduled a week-long trip to the Dominican Republic. We heard good things about Punta Cana, so scheduled a stay with a resort. We had a beautiful room that overlooked the ocean. There were nice pools, eating places, and there’s nothing like sitting is a chair and watching, listening to the waves crash on the shore. The second day, I started an occasional cough and by the third day, I could barely get out of bed. I was so dizzy that my wife had to set up chairs on the way to the bathroom so I could make it without falling down.

After a couple days of me lying in bed and my wife trying to enjoy the beach, we decided to go home. As a wonderful icing to our trip, our shuttle car got rear-ended on the way to the airport and they had to send another car to deliver us. Our airline was great about rearranging our flights and I received wheelchair rides through security, customs, and to our gates.

Upon our return, I went to the doctor and found out that I had Influenza A. Combined with other health issues that crept up on me this past year, I wasn’t in any shape to be on a vacation.

My health was an interruption to our trip.

We typically think of an interruption as something negative, for example, we don’t like it when someone continually interrupts us. But what if interruptions were a way for us to rethink or pause or go a different direction? What if we asked, what is God trying to teach me through this interruption? Maybe the interruptions are really a gift.

However, I have to admit, I’m still worried about desk clerks doing brain surgery.