The snowy view from our hotel room.

This weekend, I had a couple things happen that weren’t supposed to and could be described as downright awful.

First, the diamond fell out of my ring–at the airport.

Second, our flight turned around and returned us to Salt Lake City because of bad weather at home–when it was time to get back to work.

Through these unexpected turns and twists, I found myself calm and accepting. I certainly couldn’t control mother nature. But, I could control how I reacted to our plight. In fact, the only thing I can control in life is my attitude. I learned this fact from a sermon by Pastor Scott McKinney at CenterPoint Church in Orem, Utah. Scott is a childhood best friend of my husband’s and during most trips to watch our daughter swim, we visit him, his family and church.

Seniors made their way through the tunnel of teammates during their last home meet.

This weekend was special because we took my 85-year-old dad to visit Utah for the first time and went to the big rival meet between Utah and BYU. Utes won! We also went to watch the Red Rocks gymnastic team win a quad meet. We shared delicious meals together as a family and with my daughter’s friends. We stayed in our favorite hotel, the Little America, and for no reason, they upgraded our room. All in all, it was a perfect weekend.

But when we were headed home, things went wrong. We had a late night flight at 9:35 p.m. While sitting at Gate B 73, waiting for our flight home, I noticed my ring felt weird.

Something major was missing.

I retraced my steps from my seat by the gate to the bathroom several times, bent over and shining the flashlight from my iphone. Several strangers stopped me and asked what I was looking for. I showed them my ring and they were horrified. My husband surprised me. He was also very calm and said, “Oh well. I guess it’s time for a bigger diamond.”

We were minutes away from boarding time and I looked around me and noticed almost all of the people in the terminal were on their hands and knees searching for my missing diamond. In this moment–that should have been panicky and stressful–I was amazed and hopeful about humanity.

My dad, sitting in his seat, digging through my purse, raised his hand and said, “I found it!” Applause broke out, whoops of “Yes!” and high fives surrounded me.

Our favorite hotel, the Little America, with the Grand America across the street.

We were halfway home when I felt the plane take a sharp right turn. The pilot announced that we were headed back to Salt Lake City because the weather in Palm Springs had deteriorated to the point where no flights were landing or taking off.

We landed and waited in line to find out what our choices were. We decided to fly out the next morning on a flight to Seattle, followed by a flight to Palm Springs. I saw people visibly upset and yelling at the poor airline employees like they played a dirty trick on us for fun!

My husband and I stayed calm, we got our new tickets, found our way to a taxi with my dad, and directed the driver to return us to our hotel where we hoped to catch four hours of sleep. The taxi driver was very philosophical and said, “You guys are okay. You’re alive and this is just an experience. Embrace it.”

That’s what we did. We were inconvenienced but we survived–others in our country over the weekend who experienced bad weather were not as fortunate. Yes, we were delayed for a day and traveled with only a few hours of sleep. But, a situation that could have been ugly was okay. Because we decided that it would be.

Below are short clips from the Gymnastics and Swim Meets: