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.
“Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace when other sources cease to make me whole?”
These words, penned by poet and novelist Emma Lou Thayne, have had increasingly greater impact on me with each passing year of my life. Combine these profound words of self inquiry with the beautiful music composed by Joleen G. Meredith, and you have one of my favorite hymns of all time.
Alone Time
We all need it. There’s nothing like having time to yourself. And lately, I’ve been struggling to find and use this time.
For the past 12 years in my career, I have been fortunate to have mornings to myself. Almost every job I’ve had has required an early morning start time. Whether it’s to the construction site, the office, or some training meeting, I’m usually out of the house by 6am to start my day. This means up and at ’em between 5–6am getting ready for the day, and if I throw in a morning workout, even earlier than that.
Typically my family is still asleep when I leave for work, which means the house is quiet. One to two hours of a quiet house has been a huge blessing for my own personal alone time.
Until recently.
Halfway through this past year, I found myself unemployed and nobody demanding an early morning start time from me. As I sought for new employment opportunities and pursued new career goals during the day, my forced habit of early to rise fell by the wayside. Instead of waking up to my alarm and quietly moving about the silent, peaceful house, I was now waking up to kids running around the house, yelling, and prodding me asking if they could watch TV, while informing me the morning cereal selection was below their approved sugary standard and instead they cooked themselves eggs for breakfast, threatening to burn the house down as the combined scent of natural gas and a burned cast iron pan lingers in the air and the sound of the smoke alarm blares punishingly to my sombre parental ears.
It was quite a shock to me to wake up this way on a daily basis. And I realized what kind of affect this was having on me as my morning alone time disappeared.
Fortunately it didn’t take too long to re-employ myself, however my new career path is the first job I’ve ever had that does not require an early morning meeting of some kind. I’ll admit it has been a nice change of pace being able to assist my wife in getting kids dressed and ready for school and out the door, a task that she’s handled basically solo for the past 7 years. However, my new habit of waking to the sounds of morning juvenile apocalyptic riotousness, has endured.
Finding some alone time has become much more difficult. Now, if I get up before the rest of my family to get some alone time, it is purely by choice, and not because anyone demands it of me.
I have found myself asking the same questions that Emma Lou Thayne poses, lamenting the source of my quiet mornings and seeking other opportunities to find peace and solace.
The Storms Never Stop
As I get older, it seems that the storms of life never cease. In fact, they increase. Family relationships become strained. Children’s emotions rage. People experience life changing and often tragic events of job loss, financial trouble, illness, and death. Just when you escape one storm, you get blasted by another. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” becomes less of an effective metaphoric statement and more of a family motto.
I used to think that if I could just achieve X or accomplish Y that maybe the surrounding storms of life would finally stop, or at least simmer down to a bearable light breeze. Maybe then and only then I could realize success, happiness, and comfort.
However the storms of life are relentless. No matter what choices I make, what path I choose to follow, what beliefs I have, or what goals I pursue, the storms of life will never stop. In fact, quite the opposite. As I experience more of life, I realize just how big the storm is, and the impending doom of it all becomes unbearably overwhelming.
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something” -Westley from The Princess Bride
Seeking Solace
Thankfully, there is actually something we can do about it. Not the storms, mind you, but our response to it. If I can accept that the constant raging storm is always there and out of my control, I’m going to acknowledge it’s ever-burdening presence, and then turn to what I can control.
And what I can control is seeking solace. Seeking peace. Finding, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day, a time when I can just be with my own thoughts. Away from the noise. Away from the distractions. Deciding to turn to something that brings me peace because I have the power to do that, regardless of whatever else is going on.
It just so happened that among my recent time of unemployment and painful morning wake-up calls, I happened to be training heavily for a half-marathon, something I had never done before but had nonetheless committed to almost a year prior. The time was drawing near for the race and I had set myself goals for training and physical preparation. This preparation included running, sometimes for over an hour, as I paced myself for success.
An entire hour, alone and unbothered. Alone time! Realized at last!
I sought solace in running. Sometimes running to the tune of my own thoughts, sometimes running as I listened to an inspiring or adventurous audiobook. It wasn’t always quiet, but if I could find the right location, either on a trail or a less traveled road, and even among my huffs and puffs and pains in my legs, there was actually solace there. I could find peace, if only for a short time, that began to be a source to make me whole.
The Right Sources
I love that included among Emma Lou Thayne’s words are “when other sources cease to make me whole.”
Ain’t that the truth.
It seems like we are a culture of people wandering from source to source trying to feel whole. How often have I turned to a source, hoping it will fill me and quench my emptiness, only to find out that the feeling was only temporary at best and completely unfulfilling at worst?
Everyone is demanding our attention. Everyone is “selling something.” Everyone is asking for subscriptions and follows and likes and comments. There are more distractions today than ever before. And we all give into it! We can’t even go to the bathroom without bringing in our phone and scrolling instagram or YouTube to get our fix of distractions. And the few times I happen to go to the bathroom and don’t bring my phone with me, I always have the same epiphany of how much more peaceful life was before I ever owned a phone and how many accumulative hours of life I spent sitting there, undistracted, forced to contemplate my existence for the briefest of moments and finding what simple solace I could because nature demanded it of me.
But I digress.
As for what sources help to make me feel whole, well I’m still figuring it out and it’s an ever changing and evolving experience. Over a year ago, I’m not sure I would have found much peace and solace in running. I also wasn’t running for over an hour on a regular basis. I was satisfied with my morning routine and quiet house before leaving soundlessly to work. Maybe next year life will change in a way that I look for solace elsewhere, maybe somewhere I haven’t even considered yet. It will depend entirely on me.
Nobody can tell you where you can truly seek solace. Where you might find peace and fulfillment. They can offer their experiences as examples, they can present evidence and stories, and even provide overwhelming authentic support for how they find it. It might work for you, it might not. It certainly doesn’t hurt to try and find out for yourself. But I can’t expect what brings me solace and peace to also bring you solace and peace.
All I know is that it’s important to seek it. Hopefully find it. Make time for it. And hold onto it so you can navigate the storms of life as they come.
If you’re looking for a place to start, give the bathroom a try and leave the phone behind 🙂
“…there is no Divine vending machine. Our good works are not tallied up on some giant heavenly whiteboard earning us one more brick on our heavenly mansion.”
The concept of grace has been on my mind a lot lately.
I recently finished reading a book by Adam S. Miller called “Original Grace.” I absolutely love this book. It has changed and expanded my perception on the idea of God’s grace and how it effects me personally.
Now I’m no religious scholar, and there’s quite a bit in that book that I’m going to have to read again to better understand. But after one read, there are just some thoughts about the topic of grace that I need to get out.
My goal in writing this is not to lay out a doctrinal discourse of the conceptualization of grace, and it also may not align with traditional views of grace that are generally understood and believed by others. It’s just my thoughts. My feelings. Grace as I understand it as of today according to the book of Mikey. A book that’s constantly being edited.
Prayer
I think as I’ve gotten older, my concept of God and my relationship with Him has changed.
When I was little, I sang from a very young age one of my favorite songs “I Am A Child of God.” I understood that God was my Father, and everyone here on earth are my brothers and sisters, also children of God. I prayed to Him at night, at meals, and whenever I felt sad, grateful, or in need of something.
The idea of prayer was a simple concept for me in my youth. I can talk to God, like I would talk to a friend. I could thank Him for the many things in my life I had to be grateful for. I could ask Him for help with something I was struggling with. I was taught that He would not only listen to my prayers, but that I could receive comfort and even answers to my prayers.
But this is where things got a little more difficult for me. Like it or not, every time I prayed, it felt like a one-sided conversation. Sure I would get feelings of comfort or joy and happiness, and I would take those feelings and interpret them as I felt in the moment, and that was helpful for me. But as far as words spoken back to me, something clear and easy to understand, something like an actual conversation, this never happened.
Now every Sunday and every time I read the scriptures by myself or with my family, there is story after story of God talking to people. Usually Biblical prophets, but not always. Full on conversations with specific commandments, instructions, and directions. I also grew up hearing stories of church leaders, people around me, and people that I knew talking about how they would get answers to prayers. They would share an experience or a struggle they were having, talk about faith and prayer and obedience to commandments, and the story would end with “I knew what God wanted me to do, and I did it, and it was an answer to a prayer.” Or maybe there was a twist of some kind like “I kept praying for X, I strived harder to keep the commandments, read scriptures, go to church, study, etc, and God answered my prayer in His own time and in a different way than I expected, and I didn’t realize it until later.”
Prayer is a very personal, sacred, and special thing for me and for anyone who engages in it. It’s not my place to judge someone else’s experience from prayer. But that doesn’t mean that hearing these kind of stories, both from scriptures and from people over the years, didn’t have an effect on me.
Transactional God
This effect, especially in my youth but even up until recently in my life, deeply embedded this idea that God was a transactional God. Like a vending machine that you walked up to, inserted your tokens of obedience and adherence to God’s laws, and in return you received a promised blessing. The scriptures especially are full of stories and phrases that encourage obedience and promise blessings. Over and over and over again.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that God can and will bless you in your life. He has certainly blessed me more times than I can count.
But there is a flip side to this belief of a transactional God. If obedience to God’s commandments = promised blessings, than naturally disobedience to God’s commandments = punishment. Maybe that’s too harsh, how about failure to obey God’s commandments = no blessings. You don’t pay the token, you ain’t gettin’ nothing!
I’m oversimplifying, I know, but it’s still a concept that I was taught and has been engrained in me for my entire life. And the result is a relationship with God that became transactional.
If I remembered to pray twice a day, read scriptures every day, go to church every Sunday, and keep every other commandment as best I could, any blessing I felt I received, I attributed to my diligence and my effort and God was fulfilling his promise. If I forgot to pray, or read scriptures, or missed church, or failed to keep some commandment, and something bad then happened in my life, I would immediately chalk that up to deserved punishment for not paying my obedience token.
It’s a simple concept. Easy to understand, easy to feel good about myself for the good choices I make and the nice blessings I receive, and easy to justify the reasons why bad things would happen to me if I disobeyed something.
It’s also, I now believe, completely false.
Here’s a challenge that I think every God-fearing faith-filled person can relate to: You’re struggling with something and for whatever reason you’re in dire need of blessings from God. So you follow the formula. Church. Scriptures. Study. Prayer. Service. Tithing. You grind and focus and commit yourself. You are loaded with obedience tokens, you’re feeding that vending machine. Maybe you have a specific blessing you’re in need of or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re happy to let God bless you in some way that you can see and understand and know that all this diligence, all this effort, is being rewarded cuz MAN after all this work, you are EARNING IT! ANNNNNDDDD….
Nothing.
Or maybe worse than nothing. Maybe despite your efforts, something horrible happens in your life. Something awful. Something unbearable. And now, you’re confused. You’re frustrated. You interpret all these horrible things as punishments. God is punishing you! You’re diligently paying your obedience tokens and the vending machine must be broken! The rug is pulled out from under you. You feel you don’t receive the blessing you deserve.
I don’t know about you, but when this happens to me, I find myself responding one of 2 ways: 1. Get angry at God and feel like giving up or 2. Frustrate myself into even more obedience, determined to figure out what I must be doing wrong and fix it to stop God’s punishment. Like a crazed conspiracy theorist psychopath attributing meaning and significance to every single action in my life until I spin down this whirlpool of sadness and drown in my own depression because there must be something horribly wrong with me, and I can’t figure it out. I can’t solve the puzzle. I feel undeserving, alone, and unworthy.
Worthiness
A quick side note on worthiness. I may rub some people the wrong way by saying this, but I do not like the word “worthy” or “worthiness.” It’s used all too often in church. It’s thrown around in talks, Sunday school lessons, temple prep classes, etc. Your interview for your temple recommend is even referred to as a “worthiness” interview.
I feel that the word carries with it a negative connotation and weight that results in people constantly feeling that they aren’t “worthy.” Worthy for blessings. Worthy to go to the temple or church. Worthy to get answers to prayers. Worthy of God’s love. As if God’s measurement of love for His children was directly correlated to our own worth.
And who judges my worth? Who can talk to me and conclude if I’m worthy or not?
That’s easy: Nobody.
Only God.
I think it would be a positive shift to completely remove the word “worthy” from common church vernacular. There are other words like “eligible” or “qualify” that convey similar meaning but leave off the spiritual and emotional weight and gravity of personal worth.
It’s this idea, though, in the context of a transactional God, that we can all too often feel unworthy. We are checking all the boxes to be worthy and when we don’t receive the blessings we feel we deserve, we sorrow in our own worthlessness.
The Prodigal Son
I LOVE the parable of the Prodigal Son. I think it is the most important story for understanding God’s love for his children. In Adam S. Miller’s book he goes into this parable in great detail, and expands upon it’s meaning in a way I had never understood before.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that for many years, this parable made no sense to me. One son squanders his inheritance, looses everything, falls off the deep end and comes back crawling to his father only to be embraced and celebrated? They throw a big party for him! But the person I related to was the other brother, who’s like “What the heck, dad! I’ve been here the whole time, I made all the good choices, and I never got any party! What gives?” Honestly that’s probably how I would have felt! Both sons felt they didn’t get what they deserved, based off their choices and actions.
Under the concept of a transactional God, this parable makes no sense. One son squanders his obedience tokens, but get blessed by his father anyways. One son paid his obedience tokens, but never got that kind of blessing he felt he deserved.
And it’s this parable that perfectly teaches me that God is not, in fact, a transactional God.
God’s Grace
God, our Father, is a God of grace. It is only with this understanding that I can start to comprehend the parable of the Prodigal son. It’s the only thing that explains it. And it’s written so beautifully. When the father sees his son returning, he RUNS to him! He literally could not contain his love! He had to get to him as soon as possible, and he fell upon him and kissed and embraced him.
There are some lessons that I can only fully understand as a parent. And that’s one of them. Because, if that were my child, I would do exactly the same thing.
God’s grace is not earned. It’s given freely, no strings attached. No conditions of obedience. No holding it back until I deserve it. No weighing of obedience against my worthiness for His divine love. The scale of undeserving, unrelenting, heavenly love is already tipped, and no amount of obedience or disobedience will change it.
So what does this mean for me? Well, it means I can 1. stop being angry at God and 2. stop being a crazed conspiracy theorist psychopath when all hell brakes loose on my life. Life is a mortal experience, and mortal things will happen to me. Yes, bad things are going to happen, and it’s not a direct result of anything I’ve done. And on the flip side, good things are going to happen to me, and it may or may not be God deciding to bless me. That’s completely up to Him and if I’m paying attention to receive it.
Most of my life, I never really understood God’s grace. My understanding of God’s grace came from the Book of Mormon, 2nd Nephi 25:23 “…it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”
In Adam S. Miller’s book, he amends this. A better interpretation of this passage would be “…it is by grace that we are saved, despite all we can do.”
I actually think Ephesians 2:8-9 says it best: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works…”
In other words, there is no Divine vending machine. Our good works are not tallied up on some giant heavenly whiteboard earning us one more brick on our heavenly mansion. Obedience tokens carry no currency value when it comes to God’s grace. You can earn all the faith dollars in the world, or be completely broke, and God’s love and grace for you will be exactly the same.
What an amazing GIFT it is.
In Adam S. Miller’s book he goes into great detail about how God’s grace is connected to creation, and how our own role in creation of children and raising them helps us to understand, appreciate, and internalize this idea of grace for those we love.
This idea speaks to me. This concept of grace for children, especially my own children, makes sense. I know this because I know how I feel about my own children. I often tell them when I kiss them goodnight in their beds, “I love you NM-Dub” short for “NMW” short for “No Matter What.” And it’s true. There is absolutely nothing they could do to cause me to not love them. It’s just simply never going to happen. Even if they get mad at me, ignore me, make bad choices, run away from me, never talk to me, or scream at me how much they hate me, I’ll still love them.
My children teach me what it feels like to be a father. This in turn teaches me how my Heavenly Father must feel towards me. And if it’s anything like I feel about my kids, well… it’s an extremely comforting thought.
Adam S. Miller even ends his book quoting another author, Stephen Robinson (Believing Christ) who said: “Everything you’ll ever need to know about grace can be learned in the following way: Hold a baby in your arms, perhaps while the family is out, perhaps in a chair, perhaps your own son or daughter, what do you feel? An absolute love. What has the baby done to deserve your love? Nothing. What would you sacrifice for that baby? Everything. This is God. This is grace.”
“I think as I get older, the idea of ‘it could happen’ slowly becomes ‘it’s probably not going to happen’ until it eventually settles into ‘it’s never going to happen.’… I’m tired of feeling this way”
Movies from the 90’s
I am unapologetically nostalgic for movies made in the 90’s.
So many amazing, hilarious, cheesy, heartwarming, action-packed, but most importantly, ORIGINAL movies came out in the 90’s.
Now I’m no cinema expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have a deep love of movies and consider myself well-versed in movie-lore, of all types and genres (except horror- no thanks). But I would say that I’m your slightly-above-average movie-goer, easy to please, not much of a critic, and more appreciative and open-minded than younger-me was about the world of movie entertainment.
One of the great things about movies is that we all have different reasons and motivations for watching them. Sometimes we just want to be entertained- and that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. 1990’s Jim Carey gotcha covered for that.
Sometimes we are curious about an original and fascinating movie premise. Like a cyborg from the future that comes back in time to protect the leader of the human race when he was a boy, and must defend him against a stronger, more powerful cyborg from the future. Oh and it’s a sequel that’s better than the original? Mr. “I’ll be back” definitely delivered.
Sometimes we need a silly rom-com like a nobody falling in love with a celebrity on Notting Hill, or a woman falling for a man she never meets before he goes into a coma, and then falls in love with his brother while she’s pretending to be coma-man’s fiance. Or a man falling in love with a woman who literally has his dead wife’s heart. Highly improbable, somewhat creepy and morbid, yet endearing and it brings you to tears.
Tragic love story combined with a historical boat disaster? Boom.
Literal face-swapping with a mass terrorist to save the world? Done.
Or maybe, and epically, distorting our perception of reality causing us to question if our very existence is real or just green vertical cascading computer code? Yes please.
I’m telling ya, the 90’s delivered. Over, and over, and over. When in doubt, go the 90’s movie route.
Angels in the Outfield
If you were born in the 80’s, and watched a lot of movies as a kid, chances are that among your home collection of VHS tapes, you probably had a hard plastic copy of “Angels in the Outfield” on your shelf.
I absolutely ADORE this movie. I watched it over and over and over again as a kid. Not because I loved baseball obsessively (I preferred soccer) or because I was a California Angels fan (we never really watched live sports on TV) but just because it’s a wonderful, memorable, heart-warming, silly, funny, and entertaining movie.
If you’ve never seen it, well… you know I was going to write a quick summary, but any plot summary I write just won’t do it justice. Go watch it. It’s on Disney+ right now.
And I know it’s on Disney+ right now because I just watched it with my boys, ages 10 and 8.
We live walking distance from a fairly nice turf baseball field where for this past summer, we’ve been able to enjoy local baseball games on a regular basis. During the day, when it’s empty, my boys will ride their bikes over with some neighborhood friends or cousins and they will just play for hours. It’s like I’ve time-traveled back to 1995 and they are experiencing my childhood. It makes me very happy.
As a result, my boys have really gotten into and excited about baseball. We’ve involved them in all kinds of sports over the years, and now it’s just baseball baseball baseball is all they want to go play every day.
You’ve probably had this experience before, where you’re watching a movie that you watched a lot as a kid, and you start to make some realizations. Like “oh, that’s a young Matthew McConaughey!” and “Oh, that’s Tony Danza!” and “Oh, I understand what that word means now!” (harmless swearword). Or you start to quote lines in the movie before they’re said like “Look, it’s nacho butt!” or “It’s God’s thumbnail!” or “Wait, the first word is Jose? The song’s about a Spanish guy! JOSE CAN YOU SEE!”
Quoting movies, especially 90’s movies (and classic Disney movies), is something of a speciality of mine. It comes out in conversation more when I’m with friends and family members (you know who you are) who can relate, laugh, and appreciate a well timed classic movie quote.
It Could Happen!
Well there’s one quote tonight that I knew, and anticipated, but never really much appreciated until now. The youngest boy in the movie, J.P., sweet, innocent, hilarious, and hopeful, says multiple times to his friend Roger and occasionally others, in a confident and faith-filled voice:
“It could happen!”
He says it about the Angels winning the pennant.
He says it about his father and Roger’s mother, who had both passed away when they were little and might be friends now in heaven.
He says it about him maybe getting adopted and going to a nice family.
He says it about his own ability to see real angels during the baseball games.
I’m sure there’s a few other times he said it that I’m not remembering at the moment.
But it’s a great line. It can easily be tossed away as just a naive kid with wishful thinking, but it inspired hope in me tonight as I sat down and watched this movie tonight with my boys.
I think as I get older, the idea of “it could happen” slowly becomes “it’s probably not going to happen” until it eventually settles into “it’s never going to happen.” Unfortunately adulthood brings about a lot of despair. It feels like time has run out on all of the things you wanted to make happen in your life. You get so caught up with work or school or kids or whatever is keeping you busy, that the things you once dreamt about happening, or always wanted to have happen, seem like now they never will.
And it’s a real bummer of a feeling to have. Why do we let our adult brains think this way? Why can’t we be just as hopeful, optimistic, and confident about the things we want in life now as we did when we were kids? Are we constantly feeling like we are treading water in our adult lives because we’ve tied the weights of adulthood and responsibility to our flailing legs and we’ve drowned out the dreams and wishes of our hearts?
Honestly, that’s what I feel like. And I’m tired of feeling this way.
Good News
Here’s the good news. I may be an adult, but I’m lucky to have young children. And being a parent allows me the opportunity to view life through the eyes of my children. Every minute I spend with them is a gentle reminder of the joy, wonder, and optimistic ambition life can bring.
My youngest son has dreams about being a pilot and helping people. My oldest son has goals of achieving in sports and computer science. My middle-school aged daughter thinks she’ll try out for volleyball, and maybe run cross county and track, and currently basks in the joy of musical theater and drama. They can simultaneously live in the present and enjoy every second of of their simple lives, and look to the future and dream about what and who they want to become. They have their entire lives ahead of them.
Wait a minute… So do I.
I’m just a few years ahead of them.
The only difference between me and them is slightly less time and slightly more experience. Neither of those should be an excuse to stop myself from looking forward and doing what I want to do, or being what I want to be.
The good news is that among my despair as an adult, I can look back and be grateful for at least one thing I did right:
Children. They’re more than just reminders or motivators. More than love personified. More than soft hugs and gentle kisses to get us through each grueling day.
They’re mine. They’re a part of me. Connected to me. Their feelings are my feelings. Their hope is my hope. Their dreams are my dreams. We are one family unit and everything we do effects each other.
And if they can look at their futures and say to themselves “It could happen!”…
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 2nd 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:
Mikey He Writes It 