I had a painful day of travel last week.
What was supposed to be a simple three-hour trip home from Eugene, Oregon, turned into a seventeen-hour ordeal.
Four flights.
Two missed connections.
An overnight stay in an unexpected airport with three hours of sleep.
And one very tired woman who just wanted to get home and take a shower.
It was awful, to say the least.
But somewhere in the middle of the delays, rebookings, gate changes, and exhaustion, I was reminded of something I know…but sometimes forget:
Good people are still everywhere.
At the gate in Portland, I met Copper—“like the metal,” he told me—the gate agent who somehow managed to rebook me on a string of flights that would get me home instead of leaving me stranded in Eugene until the next afternoon.
He was patient and kind as a long line of understandably frustrated passengers stood in front of him, each one displaced and disappointed. Yet he stayed calm. He kept helping. He kept trying.
I made sure to thank him because it seemed like everyone had forgotten the delay wasn’t his fault.
He looked at me and said, “Thank you for thanking me.”
That one sentence stayed with me.
On the flight from Portland to Redmond—an airport and town I honestly didn’t know existed—I sat next to DeeDee.
Within minutes, we realized we were reading the same book.
Not just the same book, but the same chapter.
So naturally, we started talking.
Books. Travel. Life. Parents. Aging.
The kinds of things strangers somehow share when the day has already gone sideways and there is nothing left to do but be human with one another.
When we landed, she helped me find my next gate. I promised to pray for her parents, Don and Bonnie, who are facing some medical issues.
We hugged goodbye like old friends.
In Redmond, I met Dottie, a gate agent who seemed to be doing the job of three people at once. She got me a good seat on the next flight and checked on me while I waited.
When I boarded, she smiled, remembered my name, and said, “Safe travels, Kelly.”
Sometimes kindness is not grand.
Sometimes it is simply being remembered.
While waiting for flight number three, I struck up a conversation with our pilot—a 6’8” former offensive lineman from the University of Utah. Naturally, we talked football.
He was friendly and easy to talk to, and before we boarded, he said, “I’ll get you home safe.”
At that point, I really needed to hear that.
Along the way, I kept running into another stranded passenger from my original delayed flight. We ended up sharing three of the four legs together.
I started calling him my travel buddy.
Every time we saw each other again, we exchanged a fist bump like we were surviving some strange airport obstacle course together.
My point in all of this?
Good people are all around us.
Even in frustrating situations.
Even when the day goes completely sideways.
Even when we are tired, stressed, disappointed, and running on fumes.
The hard part was still hard. Kindness did not make four flights feel like one. It did not erase the missed connections, the overnight stay, or the exhaustion.
But it softened the edges.
And maybe that is what kindness does best.
It reminds us that even when life feels inconvenient, unfair, or completely out of our control, we are still surrounded by people who can make the experience a little more bearable.
Life is not always what we planned.
Sometimes it is delayed, rerouted, and far more complicated than it should be.
But there are still good people along the way.
Sometimes we just have to look up long enough to see them.
💛💛💛
I love this illustration you shared of good people still out there. But I’ve also noticed you only realize it if you are a good person first. You would never have discovered all these wonderful people and made conncections with them if you had been closed off and angry. You led with kindness and you received it in return. Well done, Kelly