Ohio Doesn't Have Burger Kings.

Road trips.

I love them.

But life is hard sometimes.

I suffer.

I am a fairly healthy human being. I exercise, I eat healthy, I don't do fast food much at all.

Then there's road trips.

I have a general rule: On the way to and from Point A and Point B, you may stop and purchase food to consume wherever you want, whenever you want, with no judgment.

This is an awesome plan.

During this time my body mentally prepares itself, and the cravings begin. I am not pregnant, but I have pregnancy cravings. My body starts to tremble, my mouth begins to salivate, and I get a rumbly in my tumbly.

During this time, I may want anything from a Mr. Pibb to fried pickles to a Whatchamacallit. 

But I have to have it, whatever it is.

Let me say this again....I HAVE TO HAVE IT. My cravings are not satisfied until justice is served and I am chowing down on whatever deliciousness my starving imagination has come up with.

This time, it was a Whopper from Burger King.

Oh I'm gettin' me a Whopper.

I was on my way home from North Carolina. I was in Virginia and I thought to myself, "By Ohio I shall be near lunchtime, and for lunchtime I shall have a Whopper, or else someone shall inevitably die."

It's a 12-hour road trip. Many cravings come usually, but this was one craving, one craving only, it was specific, and it was GLORIOUS.

WELCOME TO OHIO! OH MY SOUL! THERE IT IS! I'm here! I had seen a thousand million trillion Burger Kings along the way, but I had set my goal to Ohio, so let the task of finding a food exit with that voluptuous red font written all over it begin.

First exit. Awesome....a KFC, a McDonald's, and a Dairy Queen.

Well that's disappointing. Must I push on? Of course. Mission yet to be accomplished.

Next exit: Dairy Queen and a Wendy's. That's just unnecessary.

Next: Another KFC and Dairy Queen. Do these people not like beef? Moses.

Next, and next, and next, and next exit goes by. WHY DOES OHIO NOT LIKE BURGER KING?!?! 

By this time my pulse has gone up, I'm feeling feverish, and I'm hallucinating about burgers with ketchup and mayonnaise and thinking of how I would t-bone a minivan at this point if it meant I was going to get my sandwich.

I got a text about a tornado warning....WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!?!

:insert delay due to trying to survive the cloud apocalypse that followed and then rain crashing into my vehicle with the force enough to take the feathers off of birds that got stuck in the storm:

I like run-on sentences.

Exit again, nothing. Another exit.

Now I'm angry. I'm yelling at the state of Ohio, yelling at the drivers with Ohio license plates, screaming that "They Don't Have Respect for the King" and that "They can't have it their own way because they're communists."

VICTORY! Burger King, next exit.

I pulled into the stupid drive-thru still angry. So angry I didn't even care at this point. It'd been two hours now. So I ordered.....grumpily.

I ate that sandwich bitterly. There was nothing wrong with it, but I felt the state of Ohio had wronged me for making me wait until my stomach had begun to eat itself from the inside out to get what it wanted.

Woe is me.

I naturally fall into a victim mentality when things don't go my way. Why did someone treat me that way, why didn't this situation go as I planned, why do bad things happen to me?

Instead of looking at each instance as a set of events that create one major purpose for my life, I focus on the small instances that don't matter for eternity.

When Christ faced the cross, He didn't want to. He prayed that if possible, God would let some other situation occur where He wouldn't have to die. He was human, He wanted to live. But He ended with, "Not My will, but Thine be done." He strayed away from the victim mentality that we were BORN with, and overcame it by seeing the big picture.

That road trip was one of the best things that's happened to me in a while, and I shouldn't have let something so trivial ruin its ending.

Whether it was a Whopper of a problem or not. ;)