The Covenant Promise

A while ago, I told you about my plane trip to Miami, and how scared I was to fly {as I always am} and I mentioned that God did a sweet thing for me on that plane ride. It actually was something that continued throughout the entire trip,and I wanted to tell you about it.

To explain what happened between God and me, I need to explain to you about my battle with fear, but that would take more blog posts than either of us have time for. I've always struggled with fear, and I'm not going to sit here and rake through my childhood looking for the defining moment to blame it on.

The truth is, fear is just "my thing." I am of the firm belief that everyone has a "thing" {a bent toward some sin} that they struggle with. Mine is fear. I'm not proud of it, I certainly don't LOVE it, and it's not something I think I'll ever get over. It's something that reminds me constantly of my dependence on the Lord - and that's probably good for me. It's something that He and I work through together on a moment-by-moment basis, and that plane trip was one of those moments.

My fear of flying used to be centered more around a fear of crashing {I watch too many movies about that sort of thing} - but anymore, that's not really my fear. I mean if I'm in a plane and it crashes, there's really nothing I can do about that.

My fear of flying now is probably more a claustrophobic thing. I don't like the feeling of not being able to get out. I like to sit on aisles and near doorways, in case I need to exit. Being shut in a tube and taken thousands of miles above the ground doesn't really give you much of an escape route. So my panic pre-takeoff is usually about "What if I need to get up and I can't because the seat belt sign is on?" Or... "What if I need to get out and I can't because, you know, we're in the sky?"

So that morning when we flew to Miami, my heart was pounding so hard in my chest, I'm surprised Ryan couldn't actually SEE it. I couldn't catch my breath, and there was no time to have a heart attack because we were already on the runway....

...I felt sick to my stomach and clammy and anxious and I turned my face away from Ryan, toward the window, and in a quiet whimper that I hoped couldn't be heard above the roaring engines and fans, I begged God to help me.

The sun was just beginning to rise, and as it sparkled through the window of the plane, God got my attention with this phrase: This is my covenant promise to you: you will not be sick on this trip. 

I sat in my seat and whispered the phrase "covenant promise" over and over.


Right about that time...the captain came over the speaker and said something mostly unintelligible over the garbled intercom, but the words I heard were "engine failure." I have no idea what he really said, but that's what I heard. We had already been waiting a while to take off, and I felt my heart pound again. Then a gentle whisper, covenant promise....

In the time that passed between the captains words and actually taking off, I calmed down entirely. And for the rest of the flight, I was okay. And in fact, throughout the entire trip, every time I struggled with feeling ill {like when I had some motion sickness on the boat} - I heard God's gentle whisper, Remember the covenant promise...

I love these little intimate moments we share. I love hearing His whisper.