Everyday Heroes Hidden in Plain Sight – Pt. 2

Courtesy A. Squires

I entered the plane breathless for the moment I could deplane. As my new friend's story unfolded, I found myself dreading the moment we'd land as much as I dreaded Hurricane Sandy's turbulence. 

The plane lurched and bounced. We each grabbed at the other's hands, drew back a bit, and let out nervous half giggles-half sighs when the plane evened out. For a few minutes, I had forgotten I was afraid.

An expectant mom weaved to the back of the plane trying to beat the waves of morning sickness chasing her to the lavatory beside us. We groaned kindred groans silently praying the plane would fly smoothly for her sake as well as our own.

"May I ask what you do for our country?" 

"I've just gotten back from Iraq.”  Her calm tone implied it was about the same as a trip to the grocery. She spoke of warm relationships with Iraqi people. She alluded to successes and failures experienced while there.

Courtesy D. Scott

Confidence oozed out of her pores. The fraidy cat in me blushed over my tendency to develop the vapors with the least provocation.

A spring deployment to Afghanistan overshadowed anticipated Christmas celebrations with her family. The light in her eyes dimmed a bit. She admitted to some apprehension about the future and explained how her family would care for her children and foster tot. She winced when she spoke about the hardships of being away so often and so long.

I waxed bold and asked specific questions about women coping with the rigors of life in the field. She laughed, “You'd be amazed at what you can do with eight ounces of water and baby wipes!”

I told her about my inner fraidy cat. My idea of roughing it involved trendy lugged soled hiking boots and a walk over to the glassed in elevators at an Embassy Suites hotel. She rewarded me with quick, easy laughter that captivated my motherly heart.

The plane gave another jolt. Again, I had forgotten all about hurricanes, turbulence, and plane crashes. We agreed our present circumstances were claustrophobic at best. 

Courtesy T. Parker

She chuckled and told me about her favorite way to fly. In a helicopter. The kind with no doors – for easy out and easy in. She talked about the freeing sensation of flying low and fast with the wind against her skin. Her words made me dizzy.

To everyone else on the plane, she was just another weary traveler thankful to be headed home before the storm shut the airport down. To me, she was an everyday hero hidden in plain sight. One who commiserated with my flying phobia even though she liked flying on door-less helicopters.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I did what was, for me, a heroic thing. I told her I was a person of faith and asked if I could say a prayer for her right then and there. Tears flickered and threatened to dampen her lashes as she nodded o.k.

I wrapped her in a motherly embrace and thanked the good Lord above for honoring me with the cramped, claustrophobic seat in the back of the plane. How else would I have met the hero hidden in plain sight? I thanked him for my friend in passing and begged him to follow her with peace and protection now and through all the days of her long life.

I asked him to bless her family and their time together. Lastly, I prayed Godspeed over her and her soldiers while asking God to bring peace to troubled lands through the work they do.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

 
As the minutes ticked down, we talked about the longing for comforts of home. I asked about care packages and gathered advice about items to include and ones to leave out. I promised our chance meeting would make a difference even if I didn't know how just then.

The gentle touchdown came all too quickly. I knew life would carry us on to where we were headed. I would soon be a faint memory in the rear view mirror of her life. She, however, would be indelibly inked on the memories of my heart.                                                                                  

Courtesy B. Creasy - 2010

I am combining an effort to honor this soldier with the Twitter campaign honoring the memories of the Sandy Hook, NJ shooting victims. My friends at Home Educating Family's blog offered the chance to share my vision with you on their site.  

Join me in #26acts of kindness for men and women in uniform. Fraidy cats can accomplish some awesome things when we work together!

To visit me at Home Educating Family's blog for more information, click their link below:
Home Educating Family

Everyday Heroes Hidden in Plain Sight ・Pt. 1

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I stumbled down the plane aisle trying not to betray my infrequent flier status. Did my eyes shifting back and forth while checking aisle and seat numbers betray my lack of nonchalance?

Confusion raised a nervous sweat on my forehead when I realized my seat was in the last row vs the middle of the plane. To make matters worse, I inconvenienced the young lady in the aisle seat to get to my window seat.

Hurricane Sandy bore down on us sending my flying nerves into pandemonium. I felt like a great white whale stuffed into a tuna can about to be dropped into the eye-wall of a hurricane.

The flying public is not overly chatty these days. So, I tried to figure out how to retrieve my book from below the forward seat given the one square inch of wiggle room afforded me.

Recognizing futility when I saw it, I sighed surrender and settled back to begin my prayers for arrival without aid of an airsickness bag. I gave a nervous glance at my seatmate expecting banal indifference. Trying to hide my startled reaction when her eyes met mine, I allowed a quick, "Nervous  and infrequent flier . . . ."

To my surprise, she gave a sigh of appreciation and said, "Oh, I know! Me too!"

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Rather than offering a begrudging acknowledgment of my plight and settling back with her own distractions, she drew me into an easy conversation. Had I any idea of the truth about her flying experience, I would have suspected her camaraderie was for my benefit only. Little did I know she was an everyday hero hidden in plain sight.

We asked the polite questions strangers on planes ask. We commiserated with relief knowing each understood the other's anxiety. The flight promised to replicate an old wooden roller coaster if the weatherman could be trusted.

We talked about the book she was reading and how it resonated given her life experience. It was only natural for our conversation to turn to her family. When she spoke of her children, her face took on a glow  any company selling beauty products would die to reproduce.

In her early thirties, she held a newly minted MBA. Pride in her recent  achievement paled when she spoke of being mom to a tween and teen boy and girl. On top of an already busy life, she was a new foster mom. The pitter patter of tenderness punctuated her excited giggles as she told me the story of how the toddler came to be in her care.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

When our talk turned to specifics of her vocation, the truth began to slip out bit by bit. She too was traveling for business. A shy smile appeared when she explained. Rather than traveling for her primary employer, she was traveling as part of her military service.

During each leg of my trip, I was privileged to give up my place in line to a uniformed member of the armed services. Each time, the service person replied, "Are you sure?"

My adamant reply erupted, "If I could, I would do more!"

I shook my head in wonder to find  this amazing woman, young enough to be my daughter, was one of the ones I  been watchful for as I traveled. Dressed in street clothes, she would have vanished in the crowd but for our sharing cramped seats at the back of a plane.  Sometimes God pulls some sneaky ones, doesn't he?

"National  Guard?" I asked.  Her smile glowed again as she nodded an affirmation. The writer in me sat up like a dog begging for treats. You know me. I always need to know more.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

What about you fraidy cat? Have you ever met someone and known the meeting would change your life? I can't wait to tell you the rest of this story. When I'm done, I hope you'll join me in random acts of kindness.

See you tomorrow, and we'll get this party started, o.k.?

Hebrews 13:2 (NLT) 
Don't forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it! 

Me... A High Plains Drifter.....

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I survived the plane rides and the subsequent 90 minute journey to my final destination. I felt as if I was caught in some surreal suspended animation. As the miles evaporated below me, it seemed I was watching it happen through someone else's eyes.

I would have pinched myself to make sure it was real. Even if I'd tried, I think I was too numb for the experiment to have succeeded. My mom adored flying even tho' she only flew twice in her 8 decades. What a pity that I didn't get that gene.

Pecos, NM

It is quiet now. I am far from the hustle and bustle of the airports and my normal life. I don't think I've heard this kind of quiet since my childhood days on the Outer Banks of NC. Then, as now, the loudest night noise was the wind, and the brightest night light was the moon. I am waiting for the howl of coyotes or the strains of the theme song to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. So far, the quiet echoes into infinity.

I am both peaceful and on edge simultaneously. It has been 2 decades since I was this 'alone'. I have never been this alone in this kind of quiet. In an ironic twist, my early arrival provided for yet another singular experience. I am the ONLY resident of this entire inn. I think there are some folks in the next lodge over on the conference center grounds. But, for tonight, I have the place to myself. Ain't that special?

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Have I been signed up for fraidy cat boot camp and didn't know it? Maybe it is a good thing I don't hear coyotes howling in the wind. If Jack Nicholson shows up, I'm OUT of here! If Clint Eastwood shows up, I could be persuaded to stay. Would you believe it? On cue, the coyotes just started singing at the moon. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

I wonder what tomorrow will hold. What have I really come here to do? Ultimately, the trip was about pushing back the boundaries of my fraidy cat existence. Practically speaking, I am here to work on my 'craft'. Realistically, I am here to continue to prove to myself that I can keep walking toward the me I've always wanted to be and that in the process, I will walk, and write, my way back to God.

Last May, I arrived at the writer's conference on the east coast so rattled I locked my keys in my car before I got to my room. I guess I've grown up a bit since then. I'm all tucked into the lodge I own for the night and have all my faculties and belongings intact, even the car keys. Ok...I guess we could debate about my grip on my faculties, but humor me here. It has been a long day.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

If you had asked me the odds on my being in New Mexico while Son #1 was in Australia, you know what my reaction would have been. I'd have surreptitiously snipped a bit of your hair in an effort to identify the medicinal herbs in which you had been partaking. Because the odds were zero.

What a difference a season of the year makes. He enjoyed his 1^st hot air balloon ride the same day as my 1^st post-9/11 plane flight. Wonder of wonders, I survived it all without pharmacological sustenance. Unless you count a Tylenol for a headache.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Son #1 is in Australia because of a single bit of information I picked up in one class during last May's conference. This blog grew out of a single thought during that conference. I wonder what gift this week holds and when and how I will unwrap it.

Tonight in the quiet chill of this high plains desert, I wonder, what is God doing...really? For the long dark season of loss, I thought I knew. I came to a point of concluding that, in the end, he was really up to nothing in particular when it came to me. And yet, in the worst of times when my soul was bruised and emptied, there was a fierceness in me that just would not give up.

I could hear myself in a voice from long ago. A friend and I were having much the same conversation that Richard Branson and his friend had the night his Necker Island home burned down a few months ago. I was giddy in love with the God I had grown up knowing. She was an indifferent skeptic. We were both waxing philosophical.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

My voice echoed back to me in faint whispers: “There is a God. He is real. He does care about the minutia of your life. He has a plan for you, and it is a good, good plan. He put it into motion when he threw the stars up into space. He knows your name.”

Dear God, My name is Carol Anne. I'm a fraidy cat. Can we talk about that good, good plan?

Psalm 139:16 (Bible in Basic English)

Courtesy B. Creasy

...in your book all my days were recorded, even those which were purposed before they had come into being.

Phillipians 1:6 (NLT)

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.