Big thoughts over cold coffee in an airport lounge
From where I sit, I watch the plane detach itself from the terminal cord. It’s morning, and the airport lounge is quiet and empty. The leaf-embossed cappuccino is growing cold on my coffee table. From where I sit, I wonder if that’s the window that would have been mine. Five seats from the back, always near the toilet for some reason? What I wouldn’t give to be in that seat right now, along with all the other rock star adults who do rock star things like book flights and even show up for them in time. Okay, technically I was in time. 5am is a very rock star hour to arrive at the airport, after all. Technically, for a little while, I was one amongst them, just another #winning adult, successfully rocking her life with her suitcase in tow, scrolling through her inbox while standing in the queue. Until I found out it was the wrong queue. The airline that brought me here is not the airline to bring me home. Silly, honest mistake, we say. We laugh. I’m redirected to the right queue. A few minutes later, at the right check in counter, I am ugly crying, begging, pleading, whimpering - as if it were my dying request - to let.me.on.this.plane. There was no way I could miss this - the one-year birthday celebration of Cedars, my Cedars, my tribe. I had planned my entire trip around it, I (and Anja, bless her sleep deprived soul) did little more than nap the night before to make it here in time. But ‘40 minutes prior to departure is 40 minutes, not 33’, the lady with the giant lanyard and fuchsia lips reminded me. And so I Eeyored my way to another queue called “flight change and cancellation’, aka ‘#notwinning’. As penance for my sin of false assumptions, I paid the fine and took the next flight available. The lady behind the desk said she was truly sorry. I whispered my thank you, punctuated my self-pity with a sniff. I like to think she liked me. I like to think she would’ve rocked me in her capacious bosom, if it were not for the intervention needed on the dimwits throwing F bombs behind me. So I left her in the crossfire and headed for the slow lounge, where there was nothing left to do but drown my sorrows in cappuccinos and fruit parfaits. And now the plane is taxiing out of sight, the men in neon yellow are lumbering lazily up the tunnel, and I seal my moment of regret with a listless sigh. I down the cup, finish the egg wrap, check my phone for the 15th time. No blue ticks, no oversized teardrop emoji face, no one to share their own #notwinning tale of woe and momentary idiocy to lift my spirits. Just me - and my genius self-help plan, all of 5 minutes old. “Step one, Sam,” me commands myself, “Stop! Step two: THINK. Be m-i-n-d-f-u-l of the moment. Step three: ask yourself, ‘hey Sam, what needs to be done to get to that, you know, thing?” Hmmm….so far this plan seemed to lack the lustre of a future best-seller. I revisit point two - the point about being mindful, Sam, mindful. The thought is a weighty one - it carries ballast; I decide to go sub-surface on the thought of it and see where scripture takes me. I let the bible fall open more or less down the middle, in hopes of landing somewhere in Proverbs. It seems a fitting book for the situation. Practical, honest, unapologetic about the possibilities of me becoming a pit-dwelling, folly-gushing, self-entrapping sloth if I don’t get my act together. Just what I needed to hear. These words rise to meet me instead: God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. I read them again. Slowly… God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. I’m no longer reading them; I’m hearing them. The words come to me warm and kind, cool and undisturbed like still waters on a February evening. They carry a calm cadence to recalibrate breath and pulse; I lean into them. The sun bleeds red and warms my arms. “But God, why does it seem like I go around the same old mountain and never learn from my mistakes?”
God is within her, she will not fall.
“Why can I not get my act together and be more like…”
God will help her at break of day.
“God, how will I ever get around to changing the world if I can’t even get out the door to go change it?”
Be still, my child. I am within you; you will not fall. Pause. Breathe. No 5-step plan, no wagging finger; no condemnation, no reminders of “how to do it better next time” - just three words to still the storm. I will help. I will Father you. And I realised something. I think He likes me this way. Don’t get me wrong. Jesus is all for self-responsibility and mindful living and non-folly-gushing, self-entrapping slothdom. But He’s far more for mercy. He’s not tolerating our failures; He's owning them Himself. It’s as if the weight of all our humiliation and failures, the singular density of a shame that should consume us, somehow super novas our way to infinite grace. Those nails ripped through His palms and the very time-space fabric of our lives, black-holing our brokenness and swallowing our sin; a centrifugal force so furious, so powerful, that death itself was crushed by the weight of mercy’s gravity.
It’s a cosmic revelation that makes me wanna drop the mike on some mountaintop and declare like James Earl Jones: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” What if the best thing I ever offered were all my mistakes? What if the cracks were my most beautiful parts because they let Him leak through me? I don’t think we were ever meant to be all that impressive anyway. I don’t think God ever planned to use us as His marketing campaign - emotionally edited, spiritually air brushed versions of our former selves. I don’t think He has anything of the sort in mind. I think He simply wants us close, close enough to recalibrate our breath and pulse, and to hear the words all warm from heaven: I will help you. I will Father you.
God, let me live comfortably between the cracks, the imperfect places where you hide. All the broken parts - the mismatched, un-pretty edges of my story - in time become the rock clefts where we rendezvous. The crags where you pass by. The many spaces where love will rise to meet us.