My favorite part of a flight coincides with the most dangerous aspects of air travel; the take off and the landing. I am still pretty new to the travel deal, so it still has some novelty with me. Don’t get me wrong, the small seats and having complete strangers inside my personal bubble for hours is all too real; and don’t even get me started on the germs floating around in this flying tube that keeps circulating the same air. My point is there is something about the few minutes after we take off that reminds me of how big our God is. Right after take off, while we are close enough to the ground to still pick out cars and landmarks I get to say goodbye and realize we are moving on to something new. Today that was me saying goodbye to Houston where my kids are sitting in a classroom at school and my husband in a Real Estate class. I am reminded that even though God is huge, all-powerful, and created not only the air I am flying through but also the creative idea and intellect that made flying 10,000 feet in the air possible, He can still see the details. Those details may seem tiny compared to the universe but they are the things that are important to us. The craziness of it all is we would miss an opportunity to see this glimpse into the  greatness of God if it weren’t for some danger involved in the take off.

What if I had never left the ground?

Would I have been safe? Maybe. Would I have missed out on my “moment” to catch a glimpse of the enormity, grace, and love of my God? Absolutely. In life we can stay safe or we can jump into an adventure that has a tinge of danger. Not stupid danger, but danger that is held within God’s mighty hand.  Why does the danger seem so big and keep us from experiencing the fulness of life God desires for us? Why are we so scared to follow what God has placed before us?   We start asking the “what if…” questions. As my family decided to follow a path God was opening up for us to move to Houston there where a lot of what if moments for us. One thing we are learning is that even if the what if happens, the path was still right. Here were a few of our what if questions…

• What if our house doesn’t sell before school starts? Guess what, it didn’t. We had to decide if our kids would start school in Georgia or we all would move to Houston. We decided it was better for us all to be together. So in a few weeks time we chose a school district for the kids, found a small apartment, my husband quit his job and we all made the trek with a small U Haul full of only enough of our “stuff” to function in a small two bedroom apartment for a short period of time. Is that what I had planned? No. Are we paying for two households on one income? Yep. Is it challenging at times? Absolutely. Has it been worth the danger? YES!

• What if it takes a long time to find a church? Well, that didn’t take long at all. Actually Parker found the church online before they had ever touched ground in Texas. Both of the boys are getting involved in small groups and Parker has connected with the Youth Pastor that just happens to live in our apartment complex that we “randomly” chose.

• What if it takes Casey a while to get a job? Well, we never defined what “a while” means so to be honest we don’t even know how to gauge that. I am sure that Casey’s “a while” has already come and gone though. In the down time he is taking real estate classes to get his license (which he has talked about doing forever.)

The point here is that some “what if” moments work out quickly and some take a while. Some work out differently than we had planned all together. But is juggling the pathway of following God’s plan worth the danger of the take off? I say yes because the other side of the take off is the landing.

Although the landing is also the dangerous part of the flight it is the one with the greatest reward. Once the flight attendants tell us to stow our lap tops as we are approaching our initial descent we start getting the clarity again of the ground beneath us.   Isn’t that the best?  When we have a moment in life when we start seeing the clarity of where God is taking us, but if we don’t brave the danger of the landing we never get our feet on the ground. We will just keep circling the airport until we run out of fuel.  Mull that over for a moment.

I recently went to San Francisco. I got to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, see a hillside of vibrantly colored houses wonderfully packed like a can of sardines on the mountain side, become enamoured with a real trolley, and drove through a field of wind turbines in the hills of central California.  This was all made possible because I ventured out. I had been in San Francisco a few weeks earlier for a connecting flight and only saw that there is a Yoga Room in the airport (I will save that for another blog).   The depth of the experience was totally different when I really got to venture out into the place I had landed.

I’ll be honest thought, the easiest flights for me are the ones that are on small planes where you never lose sight of the ground. I always can find a place that would be acceptable for an emergency landing. It is steady and you can always see what is happening, but you never get to see the sun rise or set through the clouds. You never get the enjoyment of in air entertainment, and often never even get pretzels and a drink. Where is the fun in that? I think God wants us to live the lifestyle of getting on the jumbo jet. The flight is usually longer and you may have a lay over, but what if you get to see the glimpse of God’s hand?    I will go for the sunrise through the clouds every time! What about you?