Superficial Joy

  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...

No airport produces more anxiety in me than the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. But this visit was either an opportunity for God to show off or I got really lucky. Who knew that a trip to the airport could become a theological exercise?!?! Leave it to me to complicate and overanalyze an everyday event.  This view from the end of the long line. It looked worse in person! I finished the school year on Wednesday and flew out on Thursday morning at 8:30.  I try to avoid morning flights out of Israel because it is truly a 4-hour airport. I get  to the airport 4 hours early because it can take so long to go through all the security and check in lines. This has been an adjustment after living in Boise, where I left my house 1 1/2 hours before my flight, and Abu Dhabi, where 2 hours for an international flight was plenty. Unfortunately, the 8:30 departure was unavoidable so I arrived at 4:30 a.m. Flights into and out of Israel require an extra layer of security--an "interview" (...