To The Woman Sitting Behind Me On The Airplane

My kids were seated on either side of me, not because I like to split my attention equally among them but because their bickering required it. We were flying home from a particularly rough trip to my hometown, mainly because one of my kids was ticking like a maniac (it’s looking like it might be Tourettes), and I was weary from the kicks and grunts and blinks, involuntary albeit irritating. The kid looked like a marionette with someone drunk operating the strings.

The visit was rough but the travel worse. In the plane, we had attracted attention from his outbursts and so when I saw a two-drink bundle (complete with Pringles!) from the trifold in my seat pocket, I was happy to hide behind a buzz.

Finally, the kids fell asleep. It was a late-night flight, after all. And I was left to my own thoughts. I thought about how we were going to make this tic disorder work when he returned to school (it was Fall Break and the movements/sounds had grown worse). I thought about how mad I was that this was happening to him. I thought about how ridiculous it was to be mad about our situation when there were kids dying of childhood cancer. I looked outside the window at the darkness and thought about whether things would feel different in the morning. I got distracted and started thinking about the Halloween party I was planning next weekend. Then, I returned to being victimy, followed by being shameful for being victimy, followed by wondering about if a sweater at Nordstrom Rack was still there or not. Clearly, there was a disorganized, whip-lashy little party going on up inside my head.

When I raised my arms and my eyes for a satisfying stretch, I noticed a passenger kitty-corner behind me was using her spotlight. Everybody else was motionless in the dark, sleeping or close to it, except for this gal. I could see her through my crack, writing feverishly in a journal.

She paused, hand still, to look out into the abyss of her own window and I snatched the opportunity to creep on her beautiful, cursive writing. Her lines were bullet-pointed and I only had time for the last one:

“I need to get serious with the things of God.”

It felt so intimate that the ink forming those words had just had time to dry on the paper. That she was probably gazing outside with her own set of thoughts around that line in that very moment. And that I was sharing her moment felt a little like theft.

I turned back around, a teensy bit ashamed of my theft and also still fuzzy from my cheap wine, with some glassiness about my eyes.

Let’s face it: I was pumped and primed for a good cry as it was. But the way I felt when I teared up wasn’t overwhelm anymore. It was thankful. I was thankful that the silent deposit this stranger made in my life was so robust with meaning for me.

I had been, understandably, grieving that my son was under such a big set of challenges. It made sense that I was so impacted, so disheartened. I was actively processing.

What that stranger did for me was remind me that I had been vacillating on my own little grief spectrum all alone. I was pinging all around as though I didn’t have a partner in crime sitting right by my side. The truth was that my greatest support was simply waiting for an invitation.

My understanding of God is that God is all about surrender. All about desiring to saturate into all our attempts to navigate this life on our own. To get in our weeds. Getting serious with the “things of God” for me that night meant that one of God’s things is me. And my son.

I’m still devastated about the fact that Tourettes is a part of our story. I’m still wondering, in fact, whether that sweater is on sale. But, I want to be clear, there is a different flair to my devastation and wonderings when I invite God into the devastation and wonderings. I, like the stranger traveling on the same airplane as me, want be serious about nothing else but God. And God me.

So, thanks, Perfect Cursive Gal. You’ll never know your reach.