Potentially The Worst Decision Ever...I Mean Ever

I got to meet Andy Stanley, but this post isn't really about that. Now if you are a pastor or on staff at a church then I don't need to explain why meeting Andy Stanley is a big deal. If you are not then know that he is almost every pastor's ministry hero. In other words we have mad respect for him. As a pastor it would be the equivalent of a 13 year old girl meeting Justin Bieber, a stay at home mom meeting Oprah, a blogger meeting Jon Acuff, a movie buff meeting Steven Spielberg, a taste bud meeting the banana pudding milkshake from Chick-fil-A. Now before I got to meet him I made one of the worst mistakes of my life.

I went with my good friend Chad Johnson (no not the football player) to pick Andy Stanley up from the airport.  When we got there we parked in front of the doors right in front of a sign that said "No Parking." After a few minutes a cop knocked on the window and said, "can you give me one good reason why I should give you a citation for parking here." My friend explained what we were doing and then assured him that we would be on our way. This is where the drama started to unfold.

Chad said that he was going to go into the airport to wait for Andy Stanley, and he asked me to circle around airport until he got there. Now there are two things that are scary about this...1. I have an awful sense of direction and B. We were driving a HUGE SUV. I drive a Honda Civic and I'm not used to driving such a big vehicle.

So to circle around I had to turn a sharp corner, quickly merge into on coming traffic as the road split, and then quickly merge left as the road split again. Now after circling the airport 5 or 6 times I started to day dream. I started thinking about what I was going to say to Andy Stanley. I had to think about this because I have a history of saying stupid things to people I look up to.

All of the sudden I realized that I didn't merge to the right. I quickly turned on my signal, hit the breaks, and cut into the splitting lane. I wasn't going to make a mistake and mess things up. Or was I? I quickly realized that the correction that I made was actually a mistake. I had already merged right and now I was quickly leaving the airport. In fact it kicked me so far out of the airport when I turned the GPS on my phone on it said I had 9 miles until I could get back to the airport. Now to make matters worse traffic was awful. It was jammed! It was right at this point that Chad texted me and said, "he's here." Are you joking me?!

I quickly had a panic attack, screamed out "DEAR GOD NO!," and then took the first exit I saw. At this point I am sweating so bad it's spewing off my face. I turn the AC up as high as it could go and start looking for a gas station. After whipping into the gas station and asking for HELP I found out that I was on the road that the airport was on. After about 10 minutes I get back to the airport and pull in front of the door. After I park I look at my cell phone to see another text from Chad. It read, "He checked a bag. It's going to be a while."

So I ended up not being late to pick up Andy Stanley. I then got to ride in the car with him for about ten minutes. I didn't say anything dumb and I didn't have the guts to tell Chad that I almost royally jacked things up.

I think there is probably a sermon illustration in here somewhere. What do you think the moral of the story is?