Frustration often leads to great satisfaction

Yesterday was one of those classic travelling days when everything that could delay us, did. Testing us to see how much we could take before we turned on each other. My husband and I bickering at every turn. Our son trying to be the diplomat to keep us on track. Now when I look back on our journey, I wish we had recorded it so we could watch it and have a good laugh at ourselves for sweating the small stuff rather than appreciating the good that was happening for us.
We began our vacation waiting for what seemed like an eternity for our rental car at the soul less Hertz office because I had requested GPS much to my husband's chagrin. Causing his blood pressure and the tension between us to rise because he wanted to set out on our drive and me requesting the stupid GPS was causing the delay. But because I knew we were going into the country and did not want us to get lost, I felt having the GPS was more important than the delays. As one can well imagine, my husband and I were spatting over every little thing because we were frustrated with each other and having to wait so long for a rental car in a place that was not the best to be waiting in.
When we finally got on the road, we ran into traffic jam after traffic jam. Steam, I swear, was coming out of my husband's ears. What was supposed to be a two hour drive turned into over a three hour drive. We crept along with the only saving grace being listening to the provocative humour of Howard Stern on the radio. My husband questioning whether it was appropriate for our 15 year old son to be listening. Our son asking us to turn up the radio so he could hear. All of us laughing and somehow trying to forget the delays and hiccups we were experiencing.
And  then one of those magical moments that usually only happen in the movies happened to us. As we were creeping along, locals were trying to get out of the traffic jams and over to the side roads so they were cutting across lanes to get to the far side. When we stopped to let a black SUV cross over the lanes in front of us,something about the way the man waved at us seemed familair to me. So when he crossed, I looked at his license plate to see much to my surprise that it read, CBERMUDA! What a pleasant surprise. Out of all the millions of people in NY, how likely was it that we would cross paths with a car with a Bermuda license plate. Bringing a smile to our faces. The man had waved only in the way a Bermudian would wave. And I had trusted my gut to want to know why he seemed so familiar.
I swear he was our lucky charm for the day because afer our encounter with him, the bottleneck of traffic finally broke. Allowing us to cross over the George Washington Bridge with relative ease, feeling like we were on top of the world. Looking down over the water.  Moving us away from the congestion and the lines of buildings and homes to big open space. With wide open lanes and space to breathe. And then the lanes became smaller lanes lined with big old trees. Completely changing the landscape from one of overload and frustration to one of space and relaxation. Finally we could relax to the drive we were taking showing us how quickly life can change when we are patient enough and keep going even when it seems that everything is conspiring against us.
Allowing me to see first hand that often we give up just before we are about to hit the jackpot because we get tired of all the distractions, the noise and the stops and starts. But when we persevere and have faith, what we gain is so much more than giving up. Coming out of the hustle and bustle of the city and entering the peace and serenity of nature in upstate New York illustrated that fact for me loud and clear as I looked around at the mountain in front of us, the beautiful old trees that could tell us many stories and the wide open space. Allowing me to be truly grateful for every hiccup and frustration we had experienced along the way because each one of them had been necessary for me to appreciate the beauty that was before my eyes.
Beauty I may have taken for granted had we not experienced what we had to get to where we were. On vacation with my family almost ready to see our daughter after nearly three weeks. What could be better than that! What a great lesson to learn, frustration often leads to great satisfaction. And as always the journey is much more rewarding than the destination when we take the time to appreciate we are always where we are meant to be, delays, mishaps and all. So true. So true.