Exhausted by the sound of the human voice and with air travel delays, I resigned myself to the last leg of the trip to West Texas wondering how I could dissociate completely for the next hour and a half. Instead, the man beside me turned out to be open hearted, long suffering, and still full of hope and faith. Younger than me by several years, he had survived more, overcome more, and as a result, deeply understood each day of his life as a gift. He stays busy, his eyes are open, he wrings all the life he can out of each day. They aren't promised.
He understands this better than most, and as we talked about how we move forward in our lives, the airplane began to shake. The shaking escalated to sudden falling and rising. The girl in the seat behind us squealed. We two laughed quietly together - the experience of turbulence - the words we were speaking to each other put to the test. We looked out the window and saw only clouds as the plane rattled and jerked. He said life is exactly like this - turbulence and zero visibility - but we keep going forward nonetheless. Faith he called it. Determination, I said.
There is healing in the world, he tells me, God is good. Don't ever give up on yourself.
He understands this better than most, and as we talked about how we move forward in our lives, the airplane began to shake. The shaking escalated to sudden falling and rising. The girl in the seat behind us squealed. We two laughed quietly together - the experience of turbulence - the words we were speaking to each other put to the test. We looked out the window and saw only clouds as the plane rattled and jerked. He said life is exactly like this - turbulence and zero visibility - but we keep going forward nonetheless. Faith he called it. Determination, I said.
There is healing in the world, he tells me, God is good. Don't ever give up on yourself.
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