My wife, Wendy, says she doesn’t like surprises. It wasn’t always this way. When we were younger, I’d say, “Road…” and she’d say, “…Trip?” and then we’d be off on an adventure. We would jump into the car and go, just for the fun of being together in a new place. With every child we added, however, (six times!), spontaneity became more difficult. Right before adding our fourth child, I secretly planned a surprise for Wendy, and God moved in such a way that none of us will ever forget it.
This was back in 2004, when we were about to travel as a family to China to pick up our first adopted daughter, Darcy, who would be 13 months old. Wendy was neck deep in preparations, and obsessed with constant thoughts for this baby who had been selected for us. Will she be afraid of us? Will she bond with us? What special needs might she have? And on, and on. I felt like we needed to get away for a few days as a couple before going to China, as our lives were about to change forever with the new baby, but I knew she would never agree to a getaway. Another trip to plan? Fuhgeddaboudit!
She’d have to be kidnapped. So that’s what I planned.
Unbeknownst to her, I canceled my upcoming seminar in Boston the next month, and made reservations for two at The Grove Park Inn, in the mountains of North Carolina, for the same days. I would just not tell her that I cancelled my seminar, so that we’d all have to get into the van on the day of our trip to “drop Daddy at the airport.” After all, I had written the details onto the calendar beforehand…I just never crossed them out.
My two biggest problems? What to do with the kids, and how to pack Wendy’s bags with her necessaries without her knowing…
And I had brilliant solutions—BRILLIANT!!!
For the kids, I arranged with two families to meet our family at an exit beyond the airport—after I intentionally drive past and miss both airport exits to drop me off for my flight—and they would take care of the kids, and Wendy and I would continue on from there to Asheville. Little by little, over a few weeks’ time, I squirreled away some of the kids’ clothes to a rarely used closet, and into small suitcases for their sleepover with friends. The slow disappearance of clothes would go unnoticed.
For Wendy, the solution was elegant. I needed to know what makeups and skin and hair products to bring, but also what clothes and shoes would be comfortable for her, and I would have to pack most of her bags at almost the last minute. (It’s one thing to steal children’s clothes from clean laundry baskets over a few weeks, but taking my wife’s favorite makeup before she puts it on, that very last day? The surprise would be over before we even left the house). And now, cue my brilliance:
“Hey, let’s make a checklist ahead of time, for our trip to China, so that we can be sure we have everything we need when we pack.”
Wendy likes the idea of organization, so I thought she’d jump all over that one. Not so fast. Making a checklist required more work for Wendy, and she was sweating out a lot of details with the adoption agency, and the Chinese and American governments, and she was focused on jumping through all the hoops to complete the official requirements and paperwork to expedite the adoption. She wasn’t going to take the time to make up a checklist for her makeup—she was just going to put off making those decisions until the night before jumping on the plane to Beijing.
Cue Brilliant Plan B: “I see you’re busy with a lot of stuff… how about I make an inventory list of the items you might need from your drawers and cabinets, and then you can just highlight the ones you want to take to China, and check them off when you’re packing?”
She seemed to be okay with that. (Honestly, I don’t think she was paying much attention to packing details. In the middle of January, we were still a month and half out from going to China in early March. My Grove Park Inn reservations were for three days near Valentines’ Day)…
I quickly discovered that a plan can be both brilliant and stupid at the same time. I realized this when I opened Wendy’s makeup drawer, ready to catalog her items. Husbands, have you ever looked inside your wives’ makeup drawers? Wendy had hers neatly arranged into compartments, but there was a dizzying array of tools and makeups. And I would have to assign names to them, like “eyelash curler/crimper,” and “eyebrow tweezer,” and “scissor handled tweezer,” and “foundation brush.” I had to catalog lipsticks by color—“red lipstick in ribbed silver case,” and “natural red-brown lipstick in black case,” and list them separate from chapsticks or “moisturizing lip balm…”
Travel size Q-tips and cotton balls and facial soaps and mascaras and makeup removers and facial lotions and skin lotions and six different types of shampoos and conditioners. Hair driers and curlers and straighteners. Feminine products of different shape and size. I catalogued them all!!! It took me a few hours to go through the cabinets, and the resulting checklist was shocking in detail and length. I typed it up and put little blanks beside each item, (for the check mark), and proudly presented it to Wendy.
She was very nice about it, but I could see that the list was way “over the top” for the need it was supposed to fulfill. She set the list aside for “later.” Much later. In fact, I don’t think she ever looked at it again. So much for my brilliant plan to pack Wendy’s essentials. So far, the only one getting surprised was me!
Time was running out, and Wendy’s avoidance to the first checklist kept me from wasting hours in the closet. I had no brilliant plan for packing Wendy’s clothes. I tried to pay attention to what shoes she preferred, the clothes she slept in, the dresses and blouses and pants and accessories, and the jewelry she wore. But I couldn’t pack those things ahead of time, and certainly couldn’t pack the things that she would reach for on the day of the trip. If she reached for particular shoes to get out the door, and I had already packed them, that would be a sure giveaway. And I realized that she would choose different shoes and clothes for a getaway to the mountains in February, and depending on the weather and the type of activity that we would be doing. What a dilemma!
In the meantime, the kids were awesome… I told them my plans, and told them not to tell Mommy. It was a risk, I know, but I wanted them to be in on the surprise. I wanted them to feel a part of something big and wonderful, and to experience the joy of preparing something happy for someone else, and I wanted to let them know ahead of time that they would also be staying with their wonderful friends. This way, the whole family would have a part of blessing Mommy, and something to look forward to.
(Also, they would probably see me taking extra suitcases down the back stairwell to the garage on that Saturday morning, or doing other strange things, and I didn’t want them asking me in front of Mommy what I was doing, or asking Mommy directly).
Well, the big day arrived, and the kids did their part to get themselves extra ready, and to collect their own toothpaste and toothbrushes. I finished packing my things as Wendy was getting ready, so I could be sure that she was going through her whole routine. While she was showering, and since our closet was separate from the bathroom, I was able to collect her clothes and underthings, sweaters, socks, hoses, and shoes without her noticing. I had reminded her and everyone else what time we needed to leave, and tried to instill some urgency for her to get ready quickly. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, in retrospect, but I really needed her to get done and out of the bathroom for good so that I would have time to grab all her bathroom necessaries.
When she came out, I asked if she could help get the kids something quick to eat before we go, as we were down to the ten minute mark. I mentioned I needed to get a few more things, and then I would join everyone downstairs, ready to go. So she went. Finally! My heart was beating fast now, as I had very little time to make a lot of important decisions.
Secure in the knowledge that Wendy was done with the bathroom, I enacted another brilliant idea. I would take ALL the items in the bathroom drawers. I opened each drawer and took each compartmented tray out, stacking them up, and I grabbed the hairdryer and a couple of other loose implements to throw on top. I was just getting ready to pick up the trays in my arms when I heard footsteps coming right up to the bathroom door. I grabbed a newspaper and placed it on top of the pile of trays and bathroom items and swooped everything into my arms to face away from the door.
Wendy opened the door and started heading past me to the toilet, and I pivoted around her to keep my back to her. Miracle #1: She didn’t ask me why I had an armful of stuff, and she didn’t see what I had in my arms…
Heading out the bathroom door, I called over my shoulder that we needed to hurry. “I’m going to miss my plane!” (True statement). And I prayed that she wouldn’t need any last makeup after she used the bathroom.
I ran the load in my arms down to the minivan and got the kids into their seats. I had everything taken care of, but I grew concerned that Wendy wasn’t out already to get into the van. I ran back inside… “Come ON, honey—we’ve got to GO!” I yelled, from the foot of the stairs. Anyone in the house would have heard that yell, no matter where they were.
For a few breathless moments, I didn’t hear anything, and then she responded, sounding confused. “I… I can’t find my lipstick!”
OH. NO. She’s looking through her drawers! Not only will she not find her lipstick—those drawers are as bare as the day before we moved in! There is nothing in them!!!
The realization that “the gig is up” hit me, and I burst out laughing, and the only thing I could think to say is, “I got it already!” I was sure she would say, “What?” and want me to explain how all of the bathroom items completely disappeared, but instead, she said, “Oh! Okay!”
I was stunned. Miracle #2: God must have put a holy fog over Wendy’s mind as she stared at an empty drawer, looking for lipstick… and my assertion that I already had her lipstick? Yeah, that’s never happened before, and probably will never happen again. That was Miracle #3, that she didn’t think it was strange for me to have thought ahead for her and brought her lipstick in the van with me.
She has to know something… maybe she’s just playing along, I thought. Just in case the gig was still “on,” I ran out to the car and fished her lipstick out of the back before she came out, and jumped into the driver’s seat. Moments later, she came out into the garage like everything was fine.
All RIGHT, God!!!! I don’t know how You did it, but we’re still going, here! Thank You!!!
I think the kids were about to burst during the twenty-five minute drive to the airport… The next stage of the plan was coming up… I had to make sure I was so deep into telling something complicated to Wendy that I “accidentally” miss the exit to the airport.
Fast approaching the airport exit, I eased the van into the right lane so that she would assume I was going to take the exit until the last second. I launched into some intricate logistics explanation, and I ignored Wendy saying softly that I needed to get over into the exit lane. She interrupted me at the last second, “Jeff, move over!” but it was too late.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was distracted.” (True statement… I was distracted by all the complicated interactions that had to happen perfectly until just the right moment).
“Okay, fine!” she said, “There’s another exit coming up in a mile… make sure you take that one or you’re going to miss your plane!” So I started talking again, immediately deep into the description again, except this time, Wendy kept giving me directions while I was talking. “Okay, stay in this lane. Okay, the exit is coming up.” I kept talking over her directions. “Okay, get into the exit lane… Get INTO the exit lane… JEFF! MOVE OVER!!!” I kept talking over her escalating demands.
… and… we missed the last exit to the airport.
“JEFF!!! What are you THINKING!?! YOU’RE GOING TO MISS YOUR PLANE!!! I can’t BELIEVE you MISSED THE EXIT AGAIN!!!
The combination of me looking like an idiot, and Mom’s outrage, was too much for the kids. We all erupted with laughter, giddy that the miraculous surprise went the entire distance.
“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?!” Wendy was giving me the “you’ve got some ‘splainin to do” look.
I began with, “Surprise!” And then I explained that we were not dropping me off at the airport, but that, in fact, we were dropping the kids off at the next exit, where the Knights and Brights were waiting to receive them… And that I had packed everyone’s things so I could “kidnap” her and continue on to a surprise destination for three days and two nights.
We pulled into a parking lot to meet our friends. They all had big smiles as I told the short version of the story about how it all came together. Dazed, Wendy heard my side of the morning’s events, and how God had orchestrated the final steps of the plan. None of what happened registered at the time as odd, but looking back, Wendy was amazed at the number and size of the clues that were left.
We laughed for the next hour in the car, until we reached Winston-Salem, at all the preparations and the coordination of people and events to pull off the surprise. We stopped at Hanes Mall so that Wendy could look over what I had brought for her, and yes, we needed to go in and do some supplemental shopping. I don’t remember what we had to buy, whether it was clothes, or shoes, or some combination, but it was a small price to pay for the element of surprise.
The Grove Park Inn was amazing. The shingle style architecture, with lots of natural wood and stone, and built in the 1930’s, is one-of-a-kind, and the mountain setting and views were special. The package came with dinner both nights, and breakfast each morning. The best part is that we could choose to eat at their highest-end restaurant, The Horizons, for one of the two dinners.
When we went to Horizons, we were almost the only customers that night, and the waitress encouraged us to enjoy ourselves, and take our time. We ordered the cheese tray as an appetizer, and were both shocked by the size of the tray, and all the different kinds of specialty cheeses and crackers on it. There was some wonderful shrimp bisque soup, and fruit, and salad, and Ostrich medallions, and for the main course, Surf and Turf, featuring Lobster and Kobe Beef Steak! The profiterole desserts were fantastic, too. When I saw what the meal would have cost if it wasn’t included in the package, my jaw dropped. We never would have spent that kind of money on a meal. How wonderful to spend three hours together, delighting in each other’s presence over a gourmet meal—we will never forget it.
In reflecting on our experience, I am struck with some spiritual parallels. God is constantly thinking about you, and me, and all people, everywhere, all through history. And He arranges little secret surprises for us. Sometimes He uses nature. A starry sky, a golden sunset, a friendly animal. Sometimes He brings us a friend, or uses a smile, or help, from a stranger. Sometimes He involves food… a delicious meal or a refreshing snack; or a smell—laced with nostalgia—of coffee, or flowers, or a tobacco pipe. There are simple pleasures all around us.
Sometimes it takes suffering to call the heart home, or pain to find a depth of fellowship with Him that we would have missed, otherwise.
He is constantly inviting us to trade the distracted and harried lives we live for a more intimate, deeply spiritual one. We were created for fellowship with Him, and with each other, and yet we can be in the same space, and look right past, hardly noticing. There are times in marriage when we look right past our spouse, because we are so distracted. We’re “there,” but not “all there,” if you know what I mean. This can happen with a friend, with a son or daughter… with anyone. And it most certainly happens with God.
God’s not asking for a 3 day getaway, or even a 3 hour meal. You can “get away” with Him in the moment, but it does take intention—to wrestle the heart free from the grip of distraction and obsession, and to look with it into the eyes of the LORD. God surprises, but we have to look for Him to see that the action is His, and to appreciate the love and care He puts into every moment, every detail of life.