It’s Sunday night. I’m sitting on a flight for work that has been delayed by over an hour now after the first flight was also delayed. The other people I am flying with have been a bit irritated that the flight keeps getting delayed but truly, I have yet to get irritated – it just is what it is. I came to this realization and just had to stop and reflect. I have flown many times and several times had delays but NEVER have I been so calm and 100% okay with the delay. Irritated, frustrated, hungry, tired, cold – yes. Calm and at peace – no.
For the record, I’m not some amazing person who is calm during stressful situations or when things don’t go according to my plan. I am Type-A, let’s have a plan for everything, have actually gone through phases where I plan everything down to the minute including going to the restroom – I’m not kidding y’all – kinda person. I am working on being a bit less structured but uh, I don’t always handle stress the best – I typically sleep very little and eat lots of candy. I digress.
So we are waiting for the plane to even arrive and the guys are not a fan of the delay. My response is along the lines of “Y’all, we are going to get there tonight still and we have nothing to be late for.” I suprised myself. I truly meant what I said and had no resentment in my heart toward this delay. And I don’t think that my reaction was me. My reaction was a manifestation of the transforming of my heart that the Holy Spirit is performing. Seriously, I love people. Always have. But I tend to be quick to blame someone for something going wrong. But I didn’t. And in traffic, I’m begining to be more gracious and less irritated when people drive funky. And it isn’t because I’m some great person – it’s because I am searching after Jesus and trying to know Him better.
You become like the 5 people you spend the most time with. I know that I have picked up traits from people that I wish I hadn’t because I was surrounded by people who acted in ways I didn’t want to. One of the biggest and most prominent examples in my life is language. I do not believe that I am called to use profanity but that is very much against society’s viewpoint. In every job I have ever worked, people have cursed (or cussed, choose whichever you prefer. I chose to say cursed because typically that is what people are doing – cursing someone or something. Anyways, back on topic). I worked in a bar-b-que restaurant in college and my best friend actually called me out one day after I had worked 5 of the 6 weekend shifts on my language and my accent. I was tending to use more foul language than not and my accent always got bad after a long weekend – I accidentally pick up people’s accents, always have. A few days of being around people that didn’t use that language and I would be almost back to normal before going to work again on the weekend. And I justified it saying, well, I don’t actually MEAN what that word means or it was just a slip of the tounge, or everyone else says it so I can too. But that isn’t right. Yeah, everyone else can do it, but that doesn’t mean it is healthy for me, that doesn’t mean it is beneficial for me, that doesn’t mean that is what I have been called to live like.
You see, what I have been learning over the past few years but especially over the past few months is that God has a plan for me but He also realizes that I live in a sinful world in a sinful body that is tempted to do sinful things. So He gave me guidelines to live by, not to keep me from doing the “fun things,” but to keep me from doing the wrong things. He told me not to use profanity, not because He wanted to limit my language but because He wants me to be set apart from this world and He doesn’t want the enemy, the devil, to have a way to worm inside me. Cursing, cussing, that is just language that has been preverted. But what it does is allow the devil to have something to latch onto and say “Well, this isn’t so bad so what about something else?” and God loves me too much to want to allow the enemy to have that position in my life. So He gave me guidelines and said that of I seek after Him, His burden is light and that He will align my heart with His. God loves me so much He sacrificed His son for me. His ONLY son. And when I say “Thank you Father,” when I accept that gift that He gave me by sacrificing His son for the bad I’ve done, and I chase after God trying to learn more and more and more, I become more like Him. My heart becomes softer so that I pray for the guy that cut me off in traffic because I want his day to get better. I calmly handle a delayed flight because I have the grace of God inside me that says, “Hey, it isn’t anyone’s fault and even if it were, love them enough to not blame them.” I choose not to curse and to fill my mind and ears with sermons and worship songs not because I wanna be a great Christian but because I wanna be more like Jesus. I want to love with passion, I want to be able to bless people and heal people not because of me, but because I have humbled myself enough to become a vessel for God to use.
I don’t really know why I wrote this, why I shared so much except that maybe you need to hear this story. I’ve been easily jaded for years, cynical and I have a seriously dry sense of humor. But I am striving for something more than that. And I am getting there with the help of God becuase of God. There is no reason my reactions should change. Oh, you could say “Well Lyss you are reading better things and listening to bettet things to better yourself so of course you’ll change.” I call that junk. I like self-help books a lot. And I have read or started a bunch of them. And listened to the podcasts. I love the idea of doing everything all by myself and making myself a better person in the process. But let me be real with you – nothing has changed. And you might say “Well you ARE only 22.” And to that I say, get over that PLEASE. I have people tell me I am too young to understand or to old to understand regularly. I argue that I am just the right age – and so are you. There is never a time too early or too late to become better than you were yesterday or better than you are today or than 15 years ago. My life is being transformed at 22 by a God that I knew but didn’t pursue or really even care about 10 years ago and I wish I would have cared 10 years ago because my faith would be today what I dream it can be in my future. Chasing after God has transformed me and I would actually even go so far as to say I am not the same person spiritually or emotionally or mentally who graduated 5 months ago. I heard a pastor say the other day “Knowing Jesus and accepting Him as your saviour is just the beginning, not the finish line. There is so much more for you after that, if only you will reach out and take it.”
10 weeks ago, I made this same trip for work and my flight got delayed by 15 minutes. I was irritated and just wanted to get home and wanted to know who had screwed up so much that they delayed my flight. Today, 10 weeks later, my flight got delayed and I was prepared to sit in the airport for hours waiting for the storm to pass with absolute peace in my heart. If this is what God can do in my heart in 10 measly weeks, I can’t wait to see what He does in 10 years.
Questions for discussion:
What happened the last time you flew?What has God done in your life lately to transform it? What do you wish for to happen in the next 10 years?
