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If you’re feeling uneasy,
And you’ve already given up hope,
In the moment it’s happening,
And you can’t grasp how you might cope,

And your friends say to you,
Just calm down you’ll get through,
But it’s easy to say and much harder to do,
There are fears out of place,
Like a slap in the face,
Just wake up from this dream,
It’s not the nightmare it seems,

Remember that scene from Gladiator,
He looses everything he has,
He cries a while, he dies inside,
Eventually he finds the strength,
To get it up again,
So get up again,
And keep fighting.

If you’ve gone to a quiet place,
I don’t mean the movie, I mean faith,
Though sometimes it can seem the same,
You’re hesitating at every breath you take,

They say time heals all wounds,
I’m not sure if that’s true,
But the wrong kind of cut,
Leaves the right scar tissue,
And when we falter back,
Now the cut is a gash,
And we scream once again,
But remember the past

Remember that scene from Gladiator,
He looses everything he has,
He cries a while, he dies inside,
Eventually he finds the strength,
To get it up again,
So get up again,
And keep fighting.

There does come a time where trying to convince myself “Everything’s Fine” is not the answer.

Tonight I was on a plane taking off from Portland destined for Phoenix. It’s a work trip, and a flight I take frequently. As the flight took off, I read my book until my eyes grew heavy, and I dozed off. Thirty minutes later, I woke up, really for no specific reason, but I noticed that there were more people chatting amongst each other.

Just overly friendly passengers. Everything’s fine.

It was about 6:00pm and the sun was on it’s way to setting and shining through the window to my right. Almost annoyingly so. But I was in the middle seat, and as everyone knows, if you find yourself in the middle seat on a plane, you have no rights. So there was nothing I could do about it.

My first hint that something wasn’t right was as I was looking between the seats in front of me, I saw Vin Diesel and Paul Walker steal a safe with some cars. Then Jason Mamoa started chasing them in his own car. I hadn’t seen this latest Fast and Furious movie yet. But I was enjoying eaves-watching on his phone, using Alaska Airlines Wifi movie service, until all of a sudden it stopped working. I watched the person in front of me tap pause and play and rewind and fast-forward. Nothing worked. That’s strange. Maybe they turned the Wi-Fi off for some reason. After a few minutes, he turned his phone off, frustrated. Did they escape with the safe? Also what about all the collateral damage to roads and bystanders and passing cars? I guess I’ll find out later.

Oh well, I’m sure everything’s fine.

About 10 minutes later, the plane tipped to the right and started to turn. The glare of the sun moved from my right and towards the front of the plane and out of sight. Hm. Well that’s odd.

I’m sure everything’s fine.

Well now that the sun wasn’t an annoyance, I tried going back to sleep, but couldn’t. Ok, I guess I’ll read a little bit more of my book. About a minute later, the captain hopped on the intercom. I already knew what he was going to say, because the sun was clearly on my left now. We were heading back to Portland.

The captain also informed us that apparently there had been some strange fumes throughout the plane, and some people were not feeling well as a result. So out of an abundance of caution, they decided to turn the plane around.

Strange fumes. Hm. Ok. Everything’s fine.

The woman on my left is fidgeting and nervous, I can sense her frustration. The young man on my right, also sensing something wrong, finally tore his eyes away from the Taylor Swift concert he had been watching (and grooving to) on his phone. He removed his headphones, and asked what was happening. I opened my mouth to answer, but the nervous woman on my left jumped in and explained the situation before I could (because again, I had no rights).

I look around and can tell that people are nervous. What could be wrong with the plane to cause fumes strong enough to turn the plane around?

No idea. But the captain has a calm and soothing voice. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

Be strong like Taylor Swift. Shake it off. Everything’s fine.

There’s nervous tension for the next 20 minutes or so as the captain informs us that we will land soon and the flight crew needs to prep the cabin. As they do this, for some reason I didn’t understand, they don’t turn on the cabin lights, and the captain asks us all to turn on our reading lights so the flight crew can see and correct our improperly stowed items, lowered tray tables, and barely inclined seats. My light was already on as I had returned to reading my book, and therefore wasn’t paying attention to why we were instructed to do this. Does the plane not have enough power to turn on the lights? Yet somehow this powerful hunk of metal we sit in propels through the air at tremendous speeds just fine?

Oh boy. Ok well, maybe this is normal in this kind of situation? I’m sure everything’s fine.

We are a few minutes away from landing, and the captain lets us know, in his most captainy voice, that some fire trucks and emergency services will escort us to the gate once we land. We land and sure enough, we’re surrounded by flashing lights and guided in. Die hard 2 flashes through my mind.

Yippee Ki-Yay. Everything’s fine.

We pull in and the captain preps us for some fireman who board and walk up and down the isle. Ok, that wasn’t so bad. I walk off the plane and there are no less than 30 fireman at the gate waiting for us to de-plane. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many fireman all together before. What in the world was going on?

I have no earthly idea. But in the end, everything was, in fact, fine.

And that’s the last concerning thought I have. I head over to a new gate and prep myself to hop on a new plane. Of course, there’s some time to kill now, so I decide to make the most of it and begin to write about my the experience. Even though nothing of consequence happened and everything and everyone is ok, I wanted to capture some of my thoughts in the moment, or shortly thereafter.

What’s interesting, and a somewhat serendipitous in a haunting sort of way, is before I even boarded the fuming plane this evening, I was already thinking about my next blog post. I was going to write about how back in 2009 my wife and I, along with the entire BYU Folk Dance team, once boarded a plane in San Fransisco headed for Beijing, and we had to turn the plane around and head back.

And tonight, for the first time since then, it’s happened again.

Yes, believe it or not, this is not the first time something like this has happened to me. Although tonight’s experience was much calmer than the experience from 15 years ago.

Fifteen years ago I was attending Brigham Young University and had a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. It was on that folk dance team that I had met and married my wife. In May of 2009, we were 5 months freshly married and sitting next to each other on a plane. It was exciting! We were heading to China for a month to perform in multiple cities from Beijing to Hong Kong. Also, for the only the 2^nd time in my life, I was crossing the Pacific Ocean on a plane. It was going to be a long flight.

The flight left late at night, so we settled in and, similar to tonight, I dozed off pretty quickly. About 30 minutes into the air I happened to wake up and I looked out the window.

And what did I see?

Flames.

Bursting!… From engine three.

Ok I don’t know if it was really engine three. But I did know there were 4 engines. And one of them was on fire.

My wife was already awake and panicking, grabbing my arm. I was still in a dream-like stupor, not even sure if what I was seeing was real. I sat there for a minute, staring out the window, and then calmly said to my frantic wife, in an overly casual and non-concerned voice:

“Everything’s fine. They have three more engines.”

I turned my head away, closed my eyes, and tried to go back to sleep.

The plane ended up turning around, going in circles for a while dumping fuel into the ocean so we could land back in San Fransisco and catch a different plane in the morning.

Obviously, and fortunately, everything did in fact turn out fine. Nobody was hurt, the flaming engine was shut off, the plane landed safely, and the BYU folk dance team, as well as many other passengers to Beijing, were mildly inconvenienced in their travel plans.

Oh yeah and my wife became much more anxious about flying for the next 10 years or so.

I learned some things about myself then.

1. I was a terrible husband. I went back to sleep and left my wife alone to panic in silence as the flaming engine roared outside the window, our eminent doom assured.

2. Don’t binge watch LOST before getting on an airplane flying over the Pacific Ocean (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42…).

3. I’m a conflict avoider. I’ll do anything and everything I can to avoid any kind of tense, anxious, scary, dangerous, contentious, or difficult situation. I can literally face the flames of death right outside my airplane window and convince myself that everything’s juuuuust fine.

For most of my life, I saw this as a positive aspect of my personality. I’m an optimist! I look on the bright side! I’m Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky-Nothing-Ever-Gets-Me-Down! Isn’t that how we’re supposed to be?

To some extent, yes. It’s a good trait to have. There’s nothing wrong with a positive outlook on life.

But there does come a time where trying to convince myself “Everything’s Fine” is not the answer. In the fifteen years since the flamey plane ride, up to today’s fumey plane ride (as I write this, I’m currently on plane number 2 now, so far so good…) I have learned over and over again that everything is not, in fact, fine.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s more than fine and things are great! Other times things just plain suck. They’re miserable. And sometimes, well sometimes you just wish that everything would end. You can’t see how you’re ever going to get out of this mess you’re in and it would be so much easier to just disappear off into oblivion. Put me out of my misery. I can’t endure this.

But here’s the thing. You can. And like most things, it just takes practice. Because I spent my entire life avoiding conflict, I sucked at dealing with conflict when I was forced to. And guess what, if you’re married, or in any kind of meaningful, committed, and lasting relationship, conflict is the main event!

And guess what else? Conflict is GOOD. It creates friction. It allows us to be human. It helps us feel more deeply. It gives us an opportunity to test our patience. To be more understanding. To open our minds to other ideas. I’m glad I’ve had conflicts. I’m glad I’ve had to learn how to sludge my way through the tense, anxious, scary, dangerous, contentious, difficult, and even heart wrenching situations.

I’m no expert by any means, but I’m slowly making my way from “Everything’s fine” to “Bring it on.” From conflict avoider to conflict navigator. From passive observer to assertive practitioner.

I’ve got a long way to go, and there’s a lot of years ahead to get there still. But as I sit here 35,000 feet in the air, crammed in my middle seat, my elbow and human rights currently stripped from me, perhaps I can look out the window to my right and see in the distance a China-bound plane, and a newly married man, heading out over the Pacific Ocean, and there’s a lot of things I could say to him about what lies ahead, but instead I’d just say: good luck buddy…

…everything’s going to be just fine.

Oh and one more lesson I’ll probably learn before the end of this trip:

I don’t got friends, I got family.

Thanks Vin.

You have tremendous worth. Inherent worth. More than you can possibly imagine.

When I was 19, I spent 2 years in the wonderful country of Ecuador serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

My Mission Call

Like a lot of young men my age who graduated from high school and went to a semester of college, the next step for me was always to serve a mission. I was mission bound. There was never even a second thought! I had three older brothers who all went on missions, and I spent my teenage years writing them on Sundays and reading their letters they would write back. Their mission stories and experiences were uplifting and inspiring, and I wanted a chance to serve! I wanted to be prepared.

So much so that when I left for my first semester at BYU, I didn’t go the route that a lot of BYU freshman go. My older brothers told me all about freshman dorms, and the cafeteria food, and freshman wards, and staying up late, and getting bad grades their first semester because they couldn’t balance school and their new-found freedom away from home… At the time, I didn’t want to do that (which proved harder to do than I thought…). I already had three brothers at BYU. How fun would it be to just live with them instead? Off campus. With a bunch of returned missionaries. In a singles ward full of slightly older non-freshman girls who, (I came to find out, and to my advantage) were tired of dating gung-ho marriage bound returned missionaries, and needed a break, so they’d go out with me because I was “safe.” It was actually a lot of fun. But that’s a story for another time…

The point is, I lived in housing off campus with my brothers, and I was the only freshman in the entire complex and in the ward.

Unlike the freshman dorms at BYU where hundreds of young men were getting mission calls every week, I was the only one waiting for a mission call in my ward! It was a big deal! The entire ward gathered in our apartment and I read out loud that I’d be serving in the Ecuador, Guayaquil South Mission. Wow! What a feeling. I’m getting goosebumps now just thinking about it. I would get to learn Spanish! I would get to live in a foreign country! I would get to serve the Ecuadorian people! I couldn’t wait.

Ecuadorian Currency

This might sound funny, but one of the experiences I was looking forward to while living in a foreign country was the experience of using foreign currency! My oldest brother had served in Ukraine where the currency is hyrvnia! My 2nd oldest brother went to Dominican Republic where the currency is the dominican peso! And my 3rd oldest brother went to Japan where the currency is yen. I looked up the currency in Ecuador and… the American dollar.

Yup. They use the American dollar in Ecuador. The currency used to be sucres, but Ecuador had apparently experienced a financial crisis back in 98-99 and switched to the American dollar.

Although disappointed, I’d collect old sucres anyways during my time there, even if they were worth nothing more than a fun souvenir.

For anyone who may not know, when you serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you pay for it. My parents had been wise with our money since I was a child and put plenty into our savings so that we could save up for our mission. I had made some money as a child model in Japan (another story for another time) and also received a yearly Permanent Fund Dividend as an Alaskan resident for the entire time I lived there. While my friends would spend their PFD’s on snowboards and video games, mine went into savings. I’m sure I griped at the time, but I’m grateful that by the time my mission came around, I didn’t need to worry about finances.

“No Vale”

While serving in Ecuador, we used cash (again, the American dollar…) to pay for pretty much anything. We had ATM cards to pull out cash, but any food or supplies we bought, it was all cash. American dollars. We walked everywhere on my mission. No bikes. No cars. All walking. We carried as little cash as possible around with us and prayed we didn’t get robbed, an occasional occurrence among my fellow missionaries (and once almost to me, but he was too drunk to do any harm while he fumbled for his knife).

While exchanging cash among the Ecuadorians, I learned something pretty quick about how they view money. And it was extremely odd.

We were on the street and stopped to buy some food from a vendor. I pulled out a $20 bill and attempted to pay. The vendor looked at my $20 bill, shook his right hand like he was doing jazz hands, then shook his head, and said to me:

“No vale“

(Pronounced “Noh bah-leh.”)

At first I didn’t understand what he was saying. It took me a second to work out the conjugation of the word “valer” which means “to be worth.” I looked at my Panamanian companion for help, but he just smiled. I barely understood him anyways. Why was this vendor saying my $20 bill wasn’t worth anything? It’s a $20 bill! I attempted again to hand the vendor the $20 bill saying “Si! Si vale! Vale veinte dolares!” Yes, it’s worth $20! As a new missionary, there wasn’t much I was sure about, but as a born and raised citizen of the United States of America, from which this here $20 bill came from, I can unequivocally tell you that this is worth $20! It’s possible, Mr. Vendor sir, that I might have more authority than you on this subject! Now take it! And give me my food!

“No, no vale!” he said again, this time pointing to the corner of the $20 bill I held in front of him. Trying to not get frustrated, and seeking to understand, I looked at what he was pointing at. In the upper left corner of my $20 bill, there was a small, almost microscopic tear. I hadn’t seen it. But even if I had, who cares! It doesn’t matter. Money gets crumpled and torn all the time. It doesn’t diminish the value of the currency. In broken Spanish, I tried to explain that just because there is a tear in the corner of the $20 bill does not mean it’s worthless. It was still very much in tact. But he refused. No matter what I did, he would not take it, and eventually we walked away.

As we made our way to our apartment, my Panamanian companion explained to me that I need to watch out for any cash that comes to me that might be damaged in any way. When getting change from vendors or stores, I had to inspect each bill carefully, because if I got stuck with any imperfections in my money, I wouldn’t be able to spend it. And if I did have any damaged money, I had to do the best I could to hide it when I exchanged it. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s something I had to get used to.

Perception of Worth

What happened in Ecuador? Who decided that just because paper money is slightly torn, it all of a sudden is worth nothing?

When it comes to money, what’s the difference between us and the Ecuadorians?

Perception.

Our perception of worth for that dollar bill does not change based on its worn and torn condition. In my experience, at least here in the U.S., even if a dollar bill has some rough edges and minor tears, we still see value. We still see worth.

It goes without saying that just because someone comes along and decides, for whatever perceived reason, that your dollar bill is not worth something, does not make it true. You know your dollar bill is worth exactly $1. Regardless of what anyone else says or thinks.

I wish I could have waved a magic wand over Ecuador and gotten rid of this negative perception, especially for a poor country that needs to use all the currency it’s people have so they can afford to live! If they could just change their perception and see the inherit worth in the money they carried, regardless of the imperfections, it would only help everyone!

Your Worth

What does it mean to have worth?

I don’t really have a good answer.

But I do know that no outside influence can determine your worthiness. Your worth is not conditional. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says about you. It doesn’t matter how anyone else judges you.

You have worth. Tremendous worth. Inherent worth. More than you can possibly imagine.

Your tears and stains and beautiful imperfections do not diminish that worth. If anything, they add to it. They make you unique. They help make you YOU.

Others may look at you and decide that you’re less than worthy. They may see your differences and think they can decide your fate. They might even forget about their own rips and tears because they’re so focused on yours. They may even laugh at you, belittle you, and tell you just how unworthy you are.

But that’s just their perception. Who cares what they think they know? You know the truth.

You know your worth.

And if you can see your own worth, and perceive the God given worth of those around you, regardless of their imperfections, you can just ignore anyone who tries to tell you…

…”No vale.”