As a great lover of history, especially survival stories from the past, I like to imagine myself as the type of person who would persevere under trial, who could outwit a difficult circumstance, or be clever enough to endure in the midst of it. But judging by how I reacted when faced with no phone for four hours in an airport makes me think that perhaps I am not such a person.

As my plane descends over the outskirts of London, past green land and hedgerows, I think, romantically, coming to England strangely feels like coming home.

It is all perfectly dreamy from the air. However, upon landing, bleary-eyed from the overnight flight, I find my phone won’t work despite my pre-planning. My mother and sisters land in a few hours and I had intended to make my way into the city to find a cozy coffee shop to wait with my new book, My Love Affair with England, by Susan Allen Toth. Bliss.

But now with no phone, what actually happens is I sit anxiously in a poorly lit baggage claim area (no coffee or snacks to be found) scanning the arriving passengers for familiar faces, praying that I would happen to see them amongst the thousands of people pouring through. Near their arrival time, I consult an attendant and realize they will probably be landing at an entirely different terminal. I wrangle my baggage and run through halls, up escalators, and onto a train bound for Terminal 3.

Once there, I find a chair directly facing the doors from which they will exit (I hope) and, after catching my breath, open my bag to pull out My Love Affair with England, determined to redeem the wasted hours. It is now I find that I have left my book on the plane.

So, I just sit, head throbbing, heart racing, stomach rumbling, planning what I will do if I don’t ever find my family and never get phone or internet access. (Turns out there are several attainable options, but the part of my brain that is supposed to see me heroically through disasters is inaccessible at the moment).

I try to pull myself together with thoughts of immigrants and refugees who arrive in foreign lands without food, connections, or the ability to communicate. (People with actual problems, you might be thinking.) A line comes to mind from a sermon my husband gave a few years before. He was talking about the role of the Holy Spirit—the Helper, or Comforter— and how we cushion so much of our life that we rarely feel that need, and can miss out on seeing God work. I’m struck by how padded my life is.

I did not leave my journal on the plane, and while I don’t feel I can conjure the mental strength to write, it seems better than staring. I get out my pen and, eyes darting between page and door, recount the events since landing. Within five minutes I detour away from my path toward meltdown, incidentally bolstering the scientific research: journaling enhances mental health, increases self-awareness (or, when one is perhaps being overly dramatic), and helps make sense of life events.

Another hungry hour passes and finally, I see those three beautiful faces pass through the steel doorframe and I holler before they can get carried away by the crowd. I run toward them and we embrace and my sister buys me coffee and I know the trip can only get better from here.

An old journal entry I recently found describes London through my teenage eyes. It was my first time to visit and I was 13.

“It is awesome! Probably the coolest place I’ve ever been in my whole life!”

“We all ran to catch a tour bus… It was so cool. We saw so much stuff like the whole city! We got hot dogs and ate them in the park next to Buckingham Palace!”

According to my journal, after spending a couple days seeing all the sights (like the whole city!), we missed our boat to France but ended up with a better option– an overnight crossing that reminded me of the Titanic, one of my childhood passions.

“The awesome thing was that we sailed away just a few miles from where the Titanic took off and then we went on the same path that it would have sailed on! I thought that was amazing. Almost the whole time I was on it, I was listening to the Titanic soundtrack. It was really neat.”

I’ve never once made an international trip, or any trip for that matter, without several miss-steps and unexpected turn-of-events. But what I have found is that, while extremely uncomfortable in the moment, these are often the stories that are canonized with fondness. Even if an entire trip was riddled with mishaps, we usually look back and recount it with complete delight, at least in my family. Maybe that’s just us, or maybe that’s what’s so great about traveling. The wonder of new discoveries outweighs the inconveniences and discomfort, and we want to go back and do it all over again.

I think it’s marvelous.