I find that air travel is an incredible opportunity to analyze my life. It's something about the change in perspective, or maybe it's just that the two hours I have to listen to the din of an engine give me enough time to think deep thoughts and eat dry roasted peanuts. Either way, the time I spend between terminals is sacred to me.
The last trip I took was a rough one — the turbulence I felt was not on the flights but between the flights, the six days I stayed in Alabama. I spent a good amount of time in prayer while I was there and by the flight back I was mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted. I slept the first thirty or so minutes of the flight and when I opened my eyes it occurred to me that we were flying through some seriously thick clouds. I wondered how the pilot could see anything at all.
We continued this way for a few minutes, 6000 feet in the air, completely blind. Little beads of water formed on the windows and moved like tears streaming across the sides of the plane. Looking out the window, these plane-tears were literally all I could see.
I imagined the pilot giving up on looking out the windows of the cockpit and instead relying on the instruments and gauges in front of him to guide the aircraft through the thick white mess. After some time, we emerged on the other side of the monster cloud that seemed to have swallowed us whole and I could see for miles out the side of the aircraft. It was a beautiful day.
Right now I am at a point in my life where I feel like I am on the right path but I don't know what lies ahead of me. If you know me at all, you know that I am a person who likes to feel in control, who likes to plan ahead, and who really can't stand not being able to figure stuff out on her own. When I was a kid, I would constantly remind my parents that "I can do it myself!" It's ingrained in me, and sometimes that's an amazing quality to have. Other times, it's the hardest one to overcome.
On a clear day many pilots could take off and land safely without relying on instruments much at all (albeit this would not make for the most accurate flight plan). A pilot might even stop relying on his instruments to guide him because he's flown so many flights on clear days with only a few glances down at them.
Imagine a pilot who, after a while, refuses to look at his instruments even when in the middle of a cloud as thick as the one on my flight. Imagine him trying to keep the plane on its correct trajectory using only his experience and sense of direction. Even the best pilot will steer the plane off course. An amateur with the same stubbornness might merely have an unpleasant few minutes of turbulence or worse, send the plane into a downward spiral.
I would hope that such a pilot would lose his license, and yet that's exactly where I have been spiritually, refusing to allow God to truly be a guide for my decisions. And at times I have chosen my independence over relationships, my job over my happiness, my friends over my family, and wrong over right. I have prayed for guidance but not listened for a response. I have said the right things without meaning them, and failed to live out my faith. I have done all of this without considering what God has to say about it, without truly using Him as the compass for my life. And I have come this far relatively unscathed, but off course nonetheless.
I have gotten very well adjusted to this way of life, this never having to look at an instrument to tell me where to go, relying only on my experience and my intuition. But now I am at a time where I cannot see a foot in front of me. Despite all of my stubbornness and "I can do it myself" nature, I must look to the one instrument that can set me back on course and keep me there. It takes a great deal of faith in that instrument to trust that I will come out of the thick of this and be on the right course, but without that faith I have only an immature guess as to what direction my life should take. It is my prayer tonight that I have that degree of faith even when it seems this cloud will never end.
"For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm." (Proverbs 1:32-33 NIV)