The Flight

One day, God decided to launch an airline. Every city will be serviced, every airport is convenient. You can fly anywhere your heart desires, and while you may not arrive on schedule, you will always arrive on time. There’s one thing that separates God’s airline from its commercial competitors. Every ticket is free, but it will cost you everything. 

This airline wasn’t built to safely deliver you to your destination. This airline was built to transport you to your purpose. 

This is my first flight, well, my first of this kind. I spend a large part of my life on commercial flights I don’t want to take. Obligations and opportunities place you thirty thousand feet in the air when just hours before you were relaxing at home. Everything can be calm, and suddenly things change. 

God's airline is different. Some layovers last for days, some for months, some for years. You never know where Heavenly Airlines will take you, all you know is you will arrive at your destination on time. 

There are unscheduled stops. There is a city called “Joy,” one called “Happiness,” “Success and Wealth” are favorite stops, but there are also places no one wants to go, places like “Disappointment,” “Despair,” “Sickness,” and “Poverty.” “Forgiveness” can be a difficult stop, so can “Reconciliation,” but the hardest of them all, is a city called “Grief.” 

There is no way you can know where you’ll be at any given moment. You just know that what surprises you never surprises God. Your trip has been well-planned. 

I settled in my seat and reached for a wrinkled magazine in the pocket in front of me. On it were the words, Heavenly Airlines - Who We Are.

One paragraph caught my attention. It read, 

“Some chose to fly with us, but most are chosen. You may start off alone or with traveling companions — but those who start the journey with you may not be with you in the end. Many decide to stay at different stops along the way. You will meet new people on your travels, new relationships will form, old ones may fade. The place a plane touches down may be your friend’s final destination, but you may still have a way to go to reach your place of purpose. Your trip is personal.”

"Hmmm," I thought. 

Throughout the years, my journey took me places I cannot explain. The highest of joy to the deepest despair. Reality is not big enough to contain what happened. There is no word in the English language that describes losing a child. Orphans lose their parents, widows lose their husbands, but nothing explains the death of your child.

Our most debilitating experiences sit inside of us, wordless. There is no language down there. There are no catchphrases that accurately point others to the spot bleeding in our very souls. We are left with vanilla expressions to describe a colorful pain. 

Losing Christopher was an out-of-body experience. It requires an out-of-body explanation. So, come with me on this journey. Come with me as I board The Flight. 

To the reader: This is an excerpt from a project I was honored to work on, The Flight. Go to CammieWolfRice.com to order your copy. It will transform how you view this journey called life.

Copyright 2022 Cammie Wolf Rice. All rights reserved