Take Courage: Airplane Seat 28C

On a weekend in September I flew to Minnesota and then drove to Wisconsin (along with all my siblings) to bury Mom's ashes in the small hometown cemetery where my Dad was buried. Although Mom had died months before, preparing to go was more emotionally difficult than I anticipated.

When I got on the flight to head to Minnesota, I was struggling.

The aircraft was cold. Painfully cold. I struggled into my sweater in the limited confines of coach seating. I wrapped my lightweight jacket over my legs like a blanket.

The flight attendants gave the normal pre-flight speeches about cabin pressure, seatbelts and oxygen masks. I buckled in, shivering.

Sometimes grief is a hot, visible mess, boiling over like pasta on the stove with no lid capable of keeping it down, but other times grief is cold, piercing and deep and you wonder if you will shatter into a million shards in the icy grip of it all.

The flight attendants’ speeches ended. I raised the shade over my side window. The sun skimmed across the wing and refracted across my skin. My face immediately warmed.

We all experience and discover God differently, but I have always found God in nature, so I accepted the welcome, the tangible embrace from a loving, pursuing God who knew the day was difficult, who understood the challenge as the weight of grief compressed my soul as I processed another layer. A God who understood the fragility of my humanness.

I fell asleep in the sunbeam, missed the beverage cart and the snacks and everything. And when I woke up, I had this verse about courage in my mind and I took out my notebook and wrote,

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage--I have conquered the world. John 16:33 NET

"I have told you these things," Jesus said. These things. What are these things?

Looking back in the chapter where this verse is located, Jesus is talking to his disciples about his upcoming death and their betrayal and abandonment of him. In these things - death, betrayal and abandonment - Jesus says it is possible to have peace. It is possible to take courage.

Jesus spoke of the disciples' greatest fear - losing him - and said, "Have peace. Take courage."

What is your greatest fear?

Mine included the death of both my parents in a short space of time and my utter helplessness in their suffering.

Have peace. Take courage

.Mine included the day-to-day reality of facing life without them, of putting my feet on the ground one more day in the midst of grief that sometimes came hot and heavy and other times came cold and piercing.

Have peace. Take courage.

And on an impossibly hard day, on an airplane to bury my mom's ashes in the graveyard where my paternal great-grandparents, grandparents and dad were buried, I heard the words:

Have peace. Take courage.

How is it possible?

Because you are not alone. On impossibly hard days, you are not alone. When it feels like the entire world rests on your shoulders - you are not alone. In the midst of death, betrayal and abandonment - you are not alone.

I know.

Because on an impossibly hard day, the pursuing love of Jesus found me. In seat 28 C. In a freezing plane with an icy ball of grief inside me, where I was assigned one of the few seats with a sunbeam, I found peace.

Because when you know you are not alone, it is possible to grab onto courage and face the impossible. The difficult. The hard

.It is possible to say again goodbye.

For you, it might not be a sunbeam, but trust me when I say Jesus is there in your world too. Look for him. Have peace. 

Take courage.