Airplanes are No Place for Tears

Wonderful New Years Eve dinner with Spokane Friends!

2012 is officially in full swing.  This reality seems to be crashing in on me today, it being my first day back at work after the holiday and school starting up again in just two short weeks (yikes!).  Part of me wishes that I could just squeeze my eyes closed tight and go back to holidays and vacations.  My holidays were spent with my lovely family, but for New Years, I charted my course northwest!  For five days I enjoyed the love and conversation of treasured friends in beautiful Spokane, Washington, only to force myself onto a Denver bound airplane yesterday and make my way home.

As I looked out the window of the plane at the outline of Spokane, organized on the ground like children's building blocks, tears filled my eyes.   My heart had come alive in the presence of friends and the company of beloved community.  Now, I was leaving a home to go home - and conflict wrestled in my heart.  As my tears increased and began blur my vision, I suddenly remembered crying on an airplane almost exactly four years ago. 

It was a cold January day in 2008 and I was going to Cyprus for the first time.  I had just said goodbye to my family, knowing I wouldn't see them for six months, and boarded a plane headed half-way across the world because I had read a website and heard a whisper from the Holy Spirit.  I felt scared and uncertain and just sat in my seat and let the tears flow freely down my face (it wasn't even a soft gentle crying - it was my ugly cry - complete with face contortion, mascara running, and sharp inhaling).  After a few moments, a sweet older woman claimed the aisle seat.  She took one look at me, her eyes full of compassion, leaned over and said, "Sweetheart, airplanes are no place for tears.  I don't know where you're going or who you've just said goodbye to, but there is a great adventure waiting for you."

Little did I know at the time that she was so, so right.  I eventually stopped crying and those next six months in the Mediterranean were some of the most adventurous, beautiful, and wonderful of my life.  All those warm memories flooded my conscious yesterday as we soared over the Continental Divide on our way to Colorado.  I reminded myself that although it was heart wrenching to leave the friends and community that have become so close to my heart, that my Father was calling me onward.  He has great and immeasurable plans for me in this season.  I don't want to miss them.

A pastor friend of mine says that the very nature of the call of God is upward.  I have found solace in that truth yesterday, last night, and today.  He beckons me to move forward, upward, onward.  So rather than lament on what I have left, I will set my eyes ahead of me - focused on His call and attentive to His voice.  After all, how am I supposed to see Him and what He wants to do in me with all these tears clouding my vision?

Here I go.