Be Still And Know

I woke up at 4 am this morning for my big travel day to Alaska. I still haven't really processed the excitment of this day and of the next 5 weeks to come, but I now have three hours in the Seattle airport and another four hour flight to Anchorage to do so. I wish to speak for a minute on travel days. Brace yourself to find out about my secret nerdy nature (that is if you havne't already come to that realization...).

I have a love/hate relationship with airports and planes and long roadtrips and vehicles. I love trips to my destination but have little enthusiasm ever for the travel part of going home. I love them mostly becasue of the escape. I have thus far spent 10 hours in travel mode today, all the while being locked inside planes and airports. And I haven't been bored once. I get so excited on these days to read and write and think. When literally trapped inside places and modes of transportation, there is nowhere to go other than your final destination and the only way to get there is to sit confined in your seat and wait for time to pass. And what better use of time than to read?! I walked into the Omaha airport this morning with five books plus my scriptures in my carry-on luggage. I must sadly report that I am now in Seattle with only four of those books. The other remains on a random American Airlines plane and was last seen in Dallas. Some flight attendant or lucky passenger is going to find that poor book complete with my margin notes and flagged pages. Shoot, they'll probably feel my love for it all the way from Alaska! I at least hope they have the urgency to finish it for me...

So, having lost one of my treasures as a casualty of this trip, I pulled out a second. I started reading from Jeffrey R. Holland's book, For Times of Trouble. It's a book of his interpretations and thoughts on the scriptural psalms. And I lost myself in it! And I'm going to relate it to this whole traveling business becasue of course I came across the most glorious and perfectly fitting thing!

Behold:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16161187-for-times-of-trouble

Be still, and know that I am God, Psalm 46:10

Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strenghten thine heart. Psalm 27:14

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Psalm 4:4

This is why I love today. I am guilty of so often falling victim to the business of life. Even when I have a few moments to sit down and eat or when there are moments at work without patients to wait on or when I'm at home with no place more I need to be for the day - sometimes even when reading my scriptures or saying my morning prayers - I'm not still. I'm thinking about all that I need to accomplish. All the people who are counting on me and all the places I need to be. I am planning out my next moments or hours in my head while not finding time to appreciate the one I'm living in. I'm wasting my time worrying about not haivng enough time.

But, let's be real, when on an airplane, there's really nowhere to go. (Same thing with roadtips - I need to put in the disclaimer here that I love roadtrips when I have company so that I can curl up in the backseat for segments of the trip not responsible for driving). My phone is off so I'm not responsible for missed calls or messages. I don't have to pay attention to traffic signs. I can't decide I need to go for a run.  I can only be still. And there's such a peace in that. It's so calming and renewing and wonderful. I can read for as long as I want and journal and think uniterrupted. And for these brief moments in life, I feel like I'm truly gifted with time in a full sense. I'm not the pilot and I don't want to be. I'm trusting a complete stranger who I've never met or even seen and I'm perfectly ok with that.
I know he's bringing me where I need to go and so I wait on him. And it's so, so wonderful!

If only I could remember to take that same stillness and trust with me when I step off of the plane. If only I could trust Heavenly Father as the pilot of every moment of my life with that same trust in Him to bring me exactly where I need to go - even when we walk through bouts of turbulence and pass terrain that's foreign to me. If only I could forever be still and know.... :)