Healing.
It is my word for the year. The thing about healing is it’s like an old wound being ripped open again. Often it feels like your heart is being ripped out and stomped on. Your brain screams abort mission. ABORT. The scar tissue seems good enough.
What I’m realizing is scar tissue is not enough if infection lies underneath. If you don’t address it is steals
Healing is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight or even in a year. I don’t always understand it and often it’s frustrating. This year has been a year of messy deep healing. Healing I can’t fully process or describe. There have been the moments my brain screamed ABORT! The festering wound underneath sounded much more enjoyable than this new thing we call healing. But God gifted me something today to help me understand the value in the hurt of healing a bit better.
I flew.
I can see you clapping your hands and saying wow that’s outstanding. Your so proud of me I bet 😁. Let me rephrase.
I flew without fear. I enjoyed flying.
The irony here is that I grew up flying. I used to love it actually! My brother is a charter pilot and would take us up while he got hours or practiced fun maneuvers like the gravity turns that pushed me deep in my seat and made me dizzy. I even went up with him when he practiced what to do if something went wrong. Like your engine stalls. Yep I was brave 😆!
As I grew older he even took us on trips when a kind soul didn’t mind family tagging along. I got to see New York City this way. Growing up flying was a tremendous blessing I loved every minute of it.
Then there were the frequent trips to Florida to see my Aunt and Uncle. I loved the big planes. I loved watching the clouds. I imagined throwing myself in them, flouncing around in them like non-cold very fluffy snow. Did they taste like cotton candy I wondered?
A plane even took me to Juarez, Mexico on a mission trip where I met my husband. Planes were filled with good good things. Good memories.
Until they weren’t.
At a difficult time of my life where I faced rejection and pain, my Uncle in Florida died. Another loss…. that is if I was keeping track. I was living in Iowa at the time going to college. I was able to drive back to Indiana with my roommate and fly with my Grandma and parents to Florida. But I was alone on the way back. I had to board a flight headed to Iowa while my family boarded a flight back to Indiana.
I was alone and I was anxious.
A deep festering— created by lies— taunted me to the point that I had a panic attack on that plane. As I got off the plane all the good memories were replaced by a deep ugly trigger.
Flying was no longer good.
To my regret, I refused to fly anywhere for our honeymoon. We drove to our destination.
Big airliners were off limits for sure. I made the exception of flying in a small plane into Canada; but only because the good memories of flying in my brothers small planes slightly out powered my fears. However, I still passed my time counting the screws that looked like they were missing on the plane…would it fall apart mid air? Would we die in a fiery crash in the middle of a Canadian forest?
It wasn’t until 4 years later I finally braved another major airliner plane bound to Florida for our babymoon. I had healed enough to realize the determination to stay off planes was only costing me experiences I wanted to have. The entire way I white knuckled the arm rest anxious as a caged cat. My sweet husband kept telling me to calm down, but I simply couldn’t. It was not a pleasant experience but we survived.
On our 5 year anniversary I decided to brave it again and we booked a trip to the Virgin Islands. The tropical honeymoon we never took. Months before we boarded I was already experiencing anxiety. The negative trigger, almost 7 years previous, was deeply rooted. I asked my Bible study group to pray for me. I have never felt the effects of prayers that intense before. I was able to sit on the plane without back breaking tension. I still worried the entire time, but physically I was calm. We flew again to Vegas about a year after that for Loren’s work with similar results. I was flying but I was still bound by the prison of fear.
So here I am. Today I boarded a plane to Orlando. The same thoughts filling my head. Will there be enough runway? Will we suck a goose in an engine and plummet to our death leaving our kids orphans? Will our landing gear get stuck and not come down? Will we collide with another plane midair? (If you are wondering—I saw that happen before on a season of plane crash documentaries.) Why do I watch stuff like that? To be prepared of course…
But the real kicker? The one I was most worried about? The tail is going to hit the runway.
I’m not making this up. Legit, illogical, real fear. So far infact that when im on the ground and see an airplane I look up and think —I sure am glad to be on the ground.
Everytime.
No doubt my pilot brother has reassured me this won’t happen (I resisted asking this time…I know his answer would be the same).
About two days ago I decided to believe God was in control. Yes I mentally knew that all along and recited Bible verses during previous flights but they didn’t reach my heart completely. I decided I wasn’t going to waste my life worrying about what could happen, strangling the joy out of life.
With that choice, I believe God gifted me with a few things. One was a well timed snippet in a book I was reading about a girl who grew up in poverty stricken Romania. As a young girl she would look up at planes overhead and dream of being a stewardess. As an adult she was able to immigrate to America and travel for speaking. She loved flying. For some reason the Spirit used that story to breath a desire in my heart to enjoy flying again.
About a week ago I saw my writing group post there would be an in person meet up during a writing conference scheduled in California. While it’s not feasible for me now, I wondered—will I ever be brave enough to board a plane by myself to go to a writing conference? In that moment I knew I wanted to. Up until then I simply never believed I had the capacity.
In church on Sunday my friend told me her sister-in-law just flew to Colorado with her 1 year old. It was another layer that gave me courage that maybe I could also be that brave someday.
The last thing that happened was my observation of planes taking off while I waited to board today. It was like a moment of clarity only God could have given me because I’ve seen planes taking off before and it never registered.
The tails don’t even come close to hitting the runway.
Not even close!
How had I believed that for so long, how did I even concoct that in my mind? I knew the answer—Because I often felt like they might during takeoff.
As we took off today, the familier pang of intense anxiety didn’t hit me. It was replaced with enjoyment. Delight even. As we soared over the towns I looked out at the plane that took off before us banking left. It looked so free. As we banked right and parted ways I watched that plane disappear into freedom. It’s finally how I felt.
These silly seemingly errelevant things taught me a few things about healing.
- Healing is a process. We need to give ourself time to heal. It’s ok.
- Healing is in Gods control, just as my fears seem to float away with this flight, in God’s time our healing will happen.
- Triggers and pain can blind us to truth and hold us back from God given opportunities.
- God gifts us with mercies and grace to show us He is with us through the healing process.
- Nothing is too small to matter. My friend telling my about her sister-in-law? Seemingly ordinary, irrelevant, but it bred a seed of hope deep inside.
- When it is time to come out from the process of healing we will know. Until then rest in Gods timing. It’s not a waste.
- Don’t give up in the messy middle. The part where our heart feels ripped out and stomped on. It won’t forever feel like that.
- It takes being brave enough to do the thing that terrifies us multiple times..even if we experience back breaking anxiety the whole time. Feelings are not indicators of truth.
- Asking friends to pray for us matters no matter how much we tell ourself to get over something, we can’t without our God given people.
I knew my flying fears were illogical but they didn’t feel that way. Shaming ourselves until submission is never the answer. Giving God time is. I fall more in love with His kindness the more I see His healing touch.
The truth is friend, we are all healing in some ways. My prayer is we can all see this process as a process to embrace not stifle. If I hadn’t gone through the pain and fear with flying I don’t think I would have ever learned to appreciate the victory of enjoying a flight again.
People can tell us all day long our fears are illogical (I’m looking at my pilot brother) but if we don’t walk through the broken and learn for ourselves this truth may never really reach our heart. I think the path to true heart knowledge is often painful. It’s in the pain and victory where we really learn. That pain and victory requires faith and time. I did need the truth tellers along the way but they weren’t an end in themselves. God’s living hand— orchestrating everything together— in His fullness of time was the thing that unlocked my freedom.
So as I sit hear descending through those fluffy cotton candy tasting clouds, I can’t help but noticing the final ironic lesson. I was so afraid of flying, logically I tried to control my “fate” through my worries and anxieties. As accepted that I wasn’t in control (like my anxiety said) I released them and surrendered my fate to the plane and pilot. In my surrender of control I was able to embrace and enjoy the flight.
Maybe that’s the same with healing. If I stopped trying to control my fate by my own anxious thoughts and instead surrendered it to the One who does control my life, maybe I could embrace and enjoy this ride. Maybe the jiggles and bumps of turbulence won’t send me over the edge but instead remind me, it’s all going to be ok—enjoy the ride.
I enjoyed my ride today. I didn’t merely endure it, I loved it. Like that little girl again. Twelve years in the healing I think I can finally mark flying off the “healing” list. The thing about healing from things is it gives us bravery to face other hard things. I don’t know about you but I want to be brave and enjoy this one life on earth I have.
[…] I booked tickets to California to attend a writing conference in March. If you read my previous post about flying you know how brave I had to be to do this. The day before I booked the tickets, I about backed out. […]