In that moment, I was sure I was going to die.  It doesn’t help that I am terrified of flying.  Despite my ability to, in general, describe the physics of a how a multiton plane can leave the ground for an extended period of time, in actuality, this process seems rather unbelieveable.  It also doesn’t help that I’ve been feeling overly mortal like my time was up.  I’m not sure why I felt that way, but I may have a guess.  I think it has to do with shedding roles and starting over.

Anyway…as the plane was climbing into the clouds, I did the only think I knew how.  I prayed.  My first reaction was to hug the stewardess as close as I could and sob on her shoulder, but she looked like she could and would gladly beat me up.  So I prayed.

Normally I pray for life.  I bargain with God, telling him I will for sure go to church if the plane lands safely.  This time I prayed for Ethan.  Ethan needs a Daddy and I think I can do the job as well as anyone.  I also prayed for forgiveness.  I’m a sinner and I’m really good at it.  That needs to change.

The plane left the clouds and the sun shone through my window.  And I relaxed.  For the first time in weeks, I felt like I was going to be make it.  I don’t think it was the sunlight.  It’s 105 degrees in Kansas City.  I think it was something else entirely.

Sometimes lessons about life come from the strangest places.

There are times when I really want something and I ask God for it. If receiving that thing is part of His plan, I get it and I am somewhat thankful.  If getting that thing is NOT part of His plan I’ve been known to do the adult equivalent of standing at the crib and screaming.  But I know that Ethan needs to go to bed just like God knows the things that would happen if I got my way.

One day I hope Ethan is thankful that I gave him boundaries.  One day I hope I am thankful for the boundaries imposed on me.

The youth group found itself going helping to prepare a house for reconstruction by hauling everything in the home out to curb everything that the family had not been able to save, all their belongings, carpeting, even sheet rock.  At a presentation in front of the church, no one was left unscatched by taking an entire lifetime’s worth of possessions, mementos, keepsakes, TVs, awards, school art projects, everything from a number of families and carrying out to the curb.

A journal was left open so that the teenagers could log their experiences.  One entry has never left me.  “In the end,” one anonymous teen wrote, “everything goes to curb.”

I try not to dwell on this fact, though I know it to be true.  Even after I reshuffled my priorities and put Ethan and Tina over work, friends, and going out, I realize one day they will go to the curb.  In a manner of speaking.  The memories and the love we shared will not survive forever, at least not in this world.

I do hope that it survives into the next and that the works I do in this world in some way honor God because He is  eternal.  He’s the frame of the house that’s left and if He remembers me then I never really went to curb, did I?

I think maybe I figured it out last today.  Last night I finished watching Stranger Than Fiction, which was a fine movie about an author (Emma Thompson) who finds out her latest character, Will Farrell, (and perhaps all her characters) are real people.  The problem: the author always kills her main characters.  It’s her schtick.

Further complicating matters is the fact that a professor of literature, Dustin Hoffman, reads the author’s manuscript with it’s proposed fatal ending and proclaims it the greatest work of English literature in the last 70 years and the crowning jewel in the author’s fine body of work. 

After reading it for himself, Farrell’s character tells the author to go ahead and kill him because his death will glorify the author and perhaps his death would have some meaning.  However, in the end, acting against her nature, the author decides to keep Farrell’s character alive and show him mercy.

The parrallels between the movie and God are numerous, but basically I understand a little more about why there is pain, suffering, and general malady in the world.  If you replace Emma Thompson with God and let Will Farrell be the Christian everyman, the pieces fall into place.  Thompson’s character created basically the perfect work of fiction.  Had things gone according to her plan, something beautiful would have resulted.  However, she showed her creation, who had used his free will to put his fate in her hands, mercy.

The result is, as Hoffman’s character put it, “Ok.  Just ok.”

So perhaps therein lies the answer.  God had a plan.  We were to live in the eternal paradise of Eden.  However, He also gave us free will so that our faith in Him would mean something.  When we exercised free will and sinned, though, He showed us mercy.  Not because He had to, but because He saw something in us worth saving.  So this reality, this now… this is because of free will (interestingly the only decision we weren’t allowed to make.  We got free will and that was that.)  After choosing not to follow His plan, God showed us mercy and therefore made His plan somewhat less than what it could be.  All because there is something in us worth saving.

It’s not a bad answer.