Over the summer, my family and I took a last-minute vacation to Florida with the goal of spending a whole week doing as little as possible. Our hope was to relax with our toes in the sand, eat some ice cream, and make great memories.

However, nothing ever goes as planned.

Our flight into Orlando, FL, just happened to coincide with a hurricane making landfall. Not only did this make for a bumpy and uncomfortable flight, but we also almost had to cancel the entire trip due to the storm! Thankfully, our flight landed safely in Florida around 1:30 AM. Waiting for our luggage and getting out of the airport only made this already exhausting journey even more tiring.

Thanks to the hurricane, we spent the next three days in our hotel room, a place we had hoped to only be in during our breaks from enjoying the beach. The storm finally passed on the second-to-last day of our trip, and off to the beach we went! However, we were greeted by an excessive heat warning, which cut our beach day to just three hours. Once back at the hotel, it was time to pack and prepare for our trip home.

We drove to our last hotel on the last night of our vacation, and once there our three kids begged us to go to the hotel pool to redeem some of the trip and catch some last-minute sun before our vacation was officially over. We gave in, applied sunscreen, grabbed a few towels, and headed to the hotel pool—only to be there for ten minutes before a pop-up severe thunderstorm, which even caught the weather people off guard, forced us to head back inside.

We faced stormy weather for almost our entire vacation. Given the choice, we would have chosen something quite different, but it was simply outside of our control. And life is like that a lot (and not just with vacations)—we make our plans, but a storm pops up and rages on longer than we’re comfortable with.

The good news is, even though we didn’t get the beach time we wanted, we were all in good spirits about the trip and still made some incredible memories despite the crummy weather. What made it most enjoyable was that we went on that vacation together, and we’ll be able to laugh about the unfortunate series of events for years to come.

Our perspective on the storm can often change based on who we are with, or who is with us. Thankfully, God has promised that no matter what we’re going through, He will never leave us or forsake us—even in the middle of a stormy beach vacation.