The Dead Head Home

Wow, what a shame I haven't written much since having a child or even since I've moved to Georgia, or maybe it's since I became a flight attendant; I hope to revive and share that passion in the coming years!  Here is one hour of my life that I typed out on my i-phone on what we flight crew call a deadhead.  A deadhead is a flight that airlines use to re-position crews to a different location, so it's not a working flight leg and we actually occupy a passenger seat.  After a 4 hour delay in Boston my crew and I finally worked our flight down to Ft. Lauderdale and when we arrived and deplaned we had to literally run to our next flight, and they so graciously held the plane for us so we could make it home for a late dinner.  We were so grateful because generally they will not delay a flight for a working crew member.  The exhaustion had set in hours before our arrival and I was looking forward to not having to work this leg home. I planned on napping, but I was compelled to write instead.  So here is one hour of my life, because that's all I have time to offer you.      

  March 4th , 2019

If I could explain my life to you I would, but that would take a year possibly years of dinners and coffee dates and conversations shared over brunch. I don’t get much time to stop and think and write and absorb what has happened to me in the last month, week, day, or heck even the last few hours. My life is traveling as fast as this 505 mile an hour Boeing I’m traveling home on from Ft. Lauderdale. I woke up in a snow storm in Boston, slept in San Antonio the night before and my husband and I packed, moved and cleaned our entire apartment in the 2 1/2 days prior to that. I got straight off the airplane from a 3day long trip, drove home and began packing. Packing without knowing where exactly we were moving to. We put all our stuff in a friends garage and took what we needed to another friends house and set up camp in their guest bedroom. Did I mention we have a 1 1/2 year old that has been off and on sick for nearly 4 months while I’ve flown around the country also off and on sick, including having the flu since Christmas Day. But hold your assumptions just a little longer about where I’m going with this...this isn’t a story about how hard or bad life has been. This isn’t a pep talk about how to overcome life’s curve balls, it’s a testament to the God who knows everything when I have no idea what’s going on.

As I settled myself into the window seat, overlooking this massive Boeing 757 wing I relaxed up against the wall and my giant red winter coat, buckled up, turned my music on closed my eyes and tears began to effortlessly slip themselves out of my closed eyelids as the plane flew down the runway and lifted off the ground. I wasn’t sad, I felt alive, I felt held. I felt held up by Him, Him as in my Creator. I felt like just a shell, that has only been held up by something other than me, someone greater than me. I breathed a deep breath and relaxed into His presence that was right there with me in the unknown. At this point I know I’m not operating on my own strength, I know myself and I know I’m not that strong. I know former versions of myself would have cracked under the pressure, would have hid away, would have ran as far and as fast away from all of this. And I haven’t even begun to explain what “all of this” is. But that’s okay I don’t need to get in to what’s happening underneath the mom, wife, flight attendant roles...because let’s be real, we all know that there is so much more going on in all of our lives that most people will never see or hear about. Often even our spouses miss the multi-layers that make up us.

I am discovering that there is great strength found in my own weaknesses. When you can’t carry yourself any further, He does. When everything falls apart, He takes all the parts and puts them together. When we give up trying, give up planning, give up striving to make it all happen, He rushes in! We all have heard the scripture, when I am weak He is strong. He shows up so strong in my life, when I’m at the end of myself, when I’m on my last leg, literally and figuratively. I have to rest in His strength to continue forward many days. I have often felt overwhelmed like Winnie Pooh who said, “yesterday, when today was tomorrow, that was too much day for me.” Interestingly enough Jesus instructs us in Matthew 6 to not worry about tomorrow, for today’s troubles are sufficient enough.

As I look out over the wingspan of this plane again I am reminded of Psalms 91:4 “He shall cover you with His feathers and under His wings you shall take refuge.” I don’t get this view much as a flight attendant. I am usually standing up in the aisles or galley working and don’t have windows to gaze out of and take in this beautiful life I’m living, process the fact that my job takes place 35,000 feet in the air and contemplate the grace and protection God is pouring out on me daily. As we lower our altitude for arrival into Atlanta I can see the shadow cast from the plane traveling over the Earth below. I am comforted thinking, that is us below, that is mankind down there, and our Father is casting His shadow of safety and protection over us who need it. “He who abides in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty” Psalm 91:1. I run to Psalm 91 on days like today, in weeks like this week and in months and months like the past several months, and even in years like this past year. What a place of refuge is this Psalm! It covers just about everything you could ever worry about. I know that this is a place I can run to that’s not an escape from life’s problems. It’s okay to hide yourself away in scripture, it’s okay, you can find sleep and refuge there in His words of life, peace and strength. We will forever be restless until we find our rest in Him. I invite you to read Psalm 91 before the day ends, to gain your own strength from its words.  

Now on our final descent into Atlanta I’m refreshed in one single flight of contemplating and getting wrapped up in the Bigness of God. We all have “all of this and that” going on, but it is there in our weakness and in our inability to figure it out, that He rushes into our lives and gives us strength. My life has two paces: flight speed, and baby speed. I let my heart and my arms prepare for the distressed baby with a chronic ear infection waiting on me to hold her tonight. I let my heart slow down, I relax into motherhood again. My life is complicated, it’s chaotic, it’s often a mess, and it's held together just barely by my husband, dry shampoo and of course Jesus. An abrupt landing and I’m back home for another 3 days, til I rinse and repeat all in God’s strength. As to where will I move, and when will my baby be healed completely? I don’t know, but I do know that Jesus is a healer and God is a way maker, a builder, and He is my House when I have no house. “Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established, by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Proverbs 24:3-4. I’m just along for the ride, if He is the plane than I’m just a passenger going wherever He’s flying...sorry flight attendant reference, I’ve been flying too much! Rest in the only One who offers true rest. Goodnight!