There’s a quote that I’ve often thought of over the past two years as we’ve lived with COVID-19. It’s popped up repeatedly in my life, both via my spiritual guru, Francois Lemay and, more recently, while my wife and I were watching a sitcom.

I think God is definitely having a chuckle over us.

Near the end of 2019, Isabelle and I agreed to sell our house. The intention was – let’s sell the house and rent for a couple of years so we can travel and see the world. I suppose this was us telling God our plans. By the time everything was said and done, we were out of the house in June 2020. Of course, everyone reading this knows that March 2020 unleashed a modern-day plague upon the Earth. Two years later, we’re just barely coming out of it (depending on where you live, of course!) So there went those plans. We wanted to travel for a couple of years. Instead, we stayed inside of our rented townhouse for the past two years.

As the world started to re-open in early 2022, Isabelle and I started having discussions about traveling again. We had both reached a point where we felt comfortable traveling to farther destinations again, knowing that masks and vaccines were quite widespread, and knowing that we need to start living with this as a part of life. As a bit of happenstance, my wife came across a sponsored post for direct flights to Paris. (I see what you did there, Facebook!) We looked into it a bit and found the prices were quite reasonable. Rather than humming-and-hawing over it endlessly for weeks as we are wont to do, we decided to listen to our instincts and booked our flights and hotels to Paris for May 2022.

We were ecstatic! Not only would this be the biggest trip we had taken together, but it would be the first time I’d left North America. Add to that the fact that we would end our trip spending 3 days at Disneyland Paris, checking another of the Disney parks off of our list. Finally, things were getting back to normal and we were starting to live the life we envisioned. Our plans were finally in motion.

Three days later, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, causing instability and worry across Europe.

A week or two after that, COVID cases started climbing again in a number of countries, including France.

Make plans, God laughs.

I try to keep a positive outlook most of the time and still have hope that we will be able to take our trip in May. Only time will tell.

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And yes, I do appreciate that not being able to take a vacation is not really a problem in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of people who are being displaced in Ukraine, and the millions being affected by COVID-19. But I am still human and allowing myself to live in my emotions temporarily.

If you can, please give to help those in Ukraine.