I couldn’t change the situation.  I couldn’t change the fact that two wonderfully diverse assignments were converging on the same date.  I couldn’t make the barge stop and wait for me.  Nor could I ask the Sempra CEO, nor Mr. Trump, to hold off until I return.  I felt for a half of a second like I couldn’t control ANYTHING within this personally disturbing “first world problem”!  And this frustrated me, too!  Thus returning back to the Prayer.  Change your thoughts, Lindz.  “Glass half FULL.”  Look there.  Thankfulness, gratitude for even HAVING such an issue!  Now what ELSE can I change?  What else DO I have control over?

And then the RIGHT solution that would not leave either of us hanging came like a light bulb that manifested over my head in (now) Terminal B!

I called her back.  “I still can’t do it, but I may have another solution.  I know a guy….

A wonderful friend and fellow media photographer I’ve worked alongside for professionally photographing other high security assignments will be the perfect alternative!  He is my first choice when I need a hand during this type assignment, as well as with heavy/extra challenging jobs.”

Fast forward and by the time I finally landed in Memphis that night, Sempra LNG’s CEO had a photographer ready who was contracted by Lindsey Janies Photography (they receive all the same client benefits now as if I was the photographer - including my offer manager Lisa handling the logistics, details, security clearance info, etc).   And my contracted photographer received an awesome assignment and some bonus compensation for his last minute accommodations to their request.

Whew!

So President Trump visited Lake Charles this afternoon.  He deplaned with the Sempra CEO.  They shook hands, visited, did important business stuff, and Lindsey Janies Photography had a photographer there for Sempra’s big day.  I was not there, but instead delayed by high waters holding up my beloved barge, but I wasn’t biting my lip, wondrously staring off, anxious and regretful of not being at Chennault. 

I spent today’s “water’s-too-high-to-move-today” delay creating B-roll time lapse videos, learning the lay of the land along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, seeing wild turkeys run/fly across the road, and realizing how much a flooded Northern Mississippi River looks just like the swamps of my homeland in Southwest Louisiana.  (I've decided "permanently flooded" is just shortened down here to "swamp".)

I’d think of where I could have been, where I was briefly tempted to be.  But I was so very content with exactly where I was, where I chose to be.  

And sometimes, even within keeping gratitude a constant practice, we need life to “up the ante”.  Challenge us a bit MORE.  Help us in looking harder in the mirror….cleaning the glass with something that will help show where we are and if we’ve stepped off of our Christian and ethical path we hold ourselves to.   Are we still making the choices our ten-years-older-then-now us would be proud of?  Sometimes, we may just need the POTUS and a cajun river barge to aid in a self “check up”.