More surprises at Ben Gurion TLV Airport

 

I began writing this on Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv after 3 flights that began at 9 a.m. on Monday, Boise time. I wasn't really looking forward to coming back to Tel Aviv before I leave on Thursday morning to go to the UK, Greece and France. 

If I'm really honest, I've been dreading it. Nothing these days gives me as much anxiety as the Tel Aviv airport. When I left in mid-June I arrived 4 hours early and it took me 2 hours to get checked in. Turned out that that was fast. Friends who left the next week had to wait 3-4 hours to check in. Pictures on Twitter showed people standing in line outside the airport to get through the first layer of security. This fed my anxiety which was even higher because my original plans for the summer involved coming back to Tel Aviv twice during July!!

I spent most of the first week of my time in the US with this underlying anxiety interrupting my sleep and constantly churning in the background. I managed to change one flight so that I now go to Geneva, Switzerland, for 3 nights instead of back to Tel Aviv. This reduced my anxiety a bunch and also gets me a new passport stamp! However, the return on July 11th was still eating my lunch. The plan was to go to Tel Aviv for two nights, unpack my 3 bags and repack for touring and hiking in Europe during July-August then fly to London on July 14. 

To change my flight to go from Boise to London directly would cost $500 and I would be carting 3 bags around for a month and would not have my hiking gear with me. So in a panic I decided to call for help. I didn't want to taint any more of my short time in the US with anxiety. I called a friend who lives in Israel and she talked me down from the cliff. 

In the end what she said to me was this: "Joy, you need to calm the f--- down." 

She said, "you will wait in line and you pop in a pod cast and just live through it. You've done it before. It's not that big of a deal." That did it! My anxiety dispersed until I landed in Tel Aviv last night and didn't see my bags on the belt--but then I realized I was on the wrong belt and my bags were waiting for me on the correct one! 

I made sure to check in 24 hours ahead of time to guarantee my seat (something I learned from my spring break trip to Spain where the plane was oversold by 20 seats and I was one of them) and I paid $10 to upgrade to some version of "better" economy. I felt like this was a trick because there was one row within the premium section that was 10 USD to upgrade instead of 45 USD. I consulted SeatGuru but it did not indicate anything was wrong with the seat I chose, so I pressed on, assuming it was a mistake. I may post later about why it was only $10, but either way I will end up in London!

This morning I did have anxiety when I ordered a taxi on the Gett app and I watched the driver miss the turn that would get him to my house faster. I wanted to be at the airport by 6:10 a.m., 4 hours early. I fortified myself for a long wait and asked God for the strength to be nice no matter what. The taxi driver finally arrived and I was sure it would be later than 4 hours when I arrived. The checkpoint to drive into the airport was just as busy as I remember it when I left 3 weeks ago and it took me 2 hours to check in.

When I got out of the taxi it was 6:07 a.m. Inside the terminal I saw the security lines A/B/C/D as usual. I assumed I was going to A because that line was long (the rest were short) and that is usually where my flights end up leaving from. I asked the information guy where to go for El Al to London and was surprised when he said, "D". 

Imagine my shock when I saw ZERO line! ZERO line for the security questions and ZERO line for checking in. It looked like this: 

Never have I ever had no lines to wait in at this part of this airport. There was a very reasonable, fast-moving line for baggage security:

But I was through security and passport control before 6:35 a.m. WOWOWOWOW!!!  Did I mention that the taxi dropped me off at 6:07 a.m.?

 The moral of the story? I keep getting the message over and over and over again that I have everything I need, that there is not need to worry, no need to freak out or be snarky, no need to manage and control. I keep getting the message that I have enough, that I am enough and that I do not need to waste time on managing and controlling these situations because God really is working in my favor. My job is to accept and surrender and let go and to help where I can and be nice about it while all this is happening.