Saturday, June 15, 2019

The Tale of the Passed Port

A “port” can be a “port of call”, a place where you arrive and depart. We have had many of these already on our travels during this journey, as well as all the many times we have traveled in the past. Each port brings its own special moments, memories and adventures to enter into. 
In Dutch a port is a gate, very much the same idea as a sea port. A gate allows entry into your yard, a barn or even a city wall. It is at the same time a barrier (think of a gate to keep the baby away from dangerous areas in the house) and an entrance. Each time we move to a different location on our travels, we pass through some of these ports, but what do you do when the port threatens to stay closed?
As we readied ourselves to leave Colorado and move on to Texas, we were thankful for Scott’s brother accompanying us to the airport in Denver. He not only works here, but he is calm and business-like when it is needed – and it was needed. Our flight was to leave just before 11am, so we had to leave the house at 7am in order to return the rental car and be at check-in in time to get through all the gates of check-in, baggage and customs before reaching our gate in our terminal. 
To start all of this process requires scanning your tickets at a ‘kiosk’ (some of you can picture this, having done it before), paying for our baggage (that’s another tale for another time) and then getting our boarding passes. At this point the kiosk asks to scan your passports. And it was at this point that we realized, frantically, that Shirley did not have her passport. 
Somewhere (we are still not sure where) her little blue book with stamps from friendly customs officials around the world had gone missing. Andsuddenly we did not know if we would be able to pass through this port to get to their gate. To make things even more complicated, Shirley only has identification from Belgium. Not a problem, really. It is a formal identity card – except that it is according to Belgian standards, which means that it is in her maiden name. 
Do you have any other forms of identification?” my brother asks. “Credit card, driver’s licence?” No – and if she does, it is in her maiden name. You see, the Belgians want their women to be able to keep their name and inherit. So Shirley, in Belgium, has always been known by and must sign her maiden name. But our tickets to fly are in her married name, because that is what is on her US passport: her married name. 
By now we have called Scott’s other brother and asked him to ransack his house, looking everywhere for the passport. Scott’s older brother suggests simply asking the ticketing agent if she can change the ticket, using the Belgian ID card. With trepidation, we stand in the line waiting for the agent, wondering how this will be resolved. We figured that, if need be, we could purchase another ticket, but wondered how our other flights would go. And we hadn’t yet gotten to either of our boys. When we finally approached Loretta (that was her name) Shirley was thoroughly miserable and Scott tried to explain what we needed. 
Loretta calmly took the creditcard-sized ID card and examined it in silence. She glanced at Shirley, looked again at the card and announced, “Well, the date of birth fits. So, okay, we’ll change that ticket for you to Walker-Raab. That should work.” And relief flooded through our limbs as we started breathing again. But we were not yet there. 
Scott’s brother walked with us (he works for TSA) and explained that they would probably flag her ID as alternate and that she would need to go through a pat-down. We went to a different security check where he was sure that they would have a female agent. Otherwise we would need to wait until they found one. But at this checkpoint, the TSA official simply looked at her ticket, glanced at her card and passed her through. We had passed this port and were on our way to the gate.
We said our farewells to Scott’s brother at the gate, thanking him profusely for his calm and his suggestion to just try what we could. We should have known. The Dutch have a saying: “You already have ‘no’. You can only get ‘yes’ if you ask.” We had passed all the way through this gauntlet and took our flight to Texas where we would need to set in motion the wheels needed to get a new passport in time to make our international travels. But we will still need to repeat this process of passing these gates three more times before we see our boys and head back to Belgium. 
Knowing that you are welcome, that you belong, is essential to our life and our life in Christ. We are so thankful that Jesus the Christ not only knew what we needed in order to pass through the gate of death but to enter into the gate of eternal life, but also took care of it. Have you considered this? What is keeping you back if you haven’t made a choice to join Him? You already have “no”. God is waiting with “YES”! 

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