By Dianna Hobbs
"God, what
am I going to do if this doesn't come through?" you ask.
And then, it
doesn't.
That's when you
find out what you'll do.
You'll wait.
There's nothing
else to do.
But how you
wait, well, that's up to you.
It never entered my mind that there would be a delay in
the arrival of the package. Every time I had done business with this
particular corporate client, any information, products or files they
were supposed to send were sent in a timely manner-sometimes, earlier
than expected.
So when word
came from this established entity that the delivery date was all set,
we planned everything around it.
As a result,
meetings and events were scheduled, and guarantees were given to other
partners involved, based on the expected time of arrival. But when the
big day came, what we were anticipating, did not.
No package, no
files, no nothing.
Not good.
But still, no
one on our team panicked.
Even though the
delay was an inconvenience, as long as the information showed up the
following day, we could still salvage our timeline and be alright.
Day 2 came and
went.
Uh-oh.
Now we had a
problem.
Mail could not
be delivered on Sunday, so we would have to wait until Monday to find
out what happened.
After making an
inquiry about the breakdown at the top of the week, the dreaded news
was confirmed. "A processing error" due to a system glitch,
was the culprit. So we could expect 2-3 more days of waiting.
When my
assistant delivered the news to me, my heart sank.
Our plans were
turned upside down and there was no way we could follow through on our
original ideas.
It was a
disaster and upsetting enough that we were inconvenienced. But, to make
matters worse, the individuals relying on us to come through were
equally put off by this whole thing.
Have you ever
had a personal setback that ended up creating a problem for you, as
well as those tied to you?
No fun, right?
Even though I
didn't like the whole thing, there was nothing that could be done about
it. So my team and I had to accept the setback, pray for God's favor
during the process, and readjust our scheduling.
Throwing a
tantrum, sinking into depression, or obsessing over what the outcome
would be, would not have changed it. So I skipped those unnecessary
(even if tempting) steps.
Unfortunate and
all, we made it through.
I won't pretend
that it didn't work on my nerves, but it also wasn't the end of the
world.
Friend,
sometimes in life, things just don't work out according to our plans.
Deadlines come and go, and the thing we were praying, hoping, and
expecting to happen, doesn't.
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