So I’m going to come right out and say it. I met a guy on the plane. Nothing serious. Nothing that would’ve led to anything. But I guess now’s just a good a time as any to explain to you where I was spiritually when I got on that flight.
Which was dead.
Spiritually dead, I mean.
My roommate Kennedy was really the first Christian I’d met who wasn’t entirely mean-spirited, hypocritical, and judgmental. In fact, her faith made a really positive impression on me. Not that I was looking for a new religion to try on. I was quite comfortable at the time with my blend of agnostic spiritualism with a few borrowings from Eastern thought, meditation, enlightenment, all that jazz. I was adamantly against organized religion, and other than that I was quite happy to live and let live.
Kennedy was the best kind of Christian friend to have because she wasn’t ever shoving her beliefs down my throat. I’d come home on the weekends drunk or high or whatever, and she wouldn’t give me a sermon. I asked her about it later, and she said her dad always told her it was wrong to expect non-Christians to act like Christians, which is smart advice if you ask me.
Anyway, back to the flight and this guy I met. He was a teacher. Math, if I remember right, and we got to flirting. We even did a little chair hopping. Kennedy moved over so he and I could sit together. It was really nice of her, now that I think about it, and kind of rude of me. But anyway, I spent a while talking to Mr. Math Babe (not that he was a total babe; I just forget his name at the moment). Which goes to show you what I said before, that this was a typical flight. We were all doing our thing, waiting to eventually land in Detroit. When you think of how much traveling Kennedy and I still had to do to get all the way out to Copper Lake, we’d really just started our trip.
And things were pretty uneventful for the first couple hours. Math Dude was making jokes. Suggesting we get some drinks during my layover in Detroit. The guy in front of us continued to be rude and obnoxious. Kennedy struck up a conversation with this old white-haired retired missionary lady … It was about as typical as flights get, if not a little chattier than normal.
And then I saw something.
No, it wasn’t the two Middle-Easterners. But wouldn’t that be a fine setback for the case against racial profiling? It was this big guy in a Hawaiian shirt sitting toward the front of the cabin. Now that I think about it, I couldn’t even tell you what it was about him that got my attention. I’m a people-watcher, I guess. Comes from all my time in the theater. Studying people’s quirks, memorizing their body language, all that jazz. But there was something about this guy that made me uneasy right from the start.
Maybe it was that gaudy Hawaiian shirt, but there was more to it than that. He was on the flight with this teen girl. I suppose if you were to glance at them real quickly you would have assumed it was a dad traveling with his daughter. And hey, it wasn’t too long since I was that age myself. I totally get not wanting to buddy up to your old man, especially in public.
But this was different.
When I looked at them together, I sort of knew they weren’t the right fit. Has that ever happened to you? Like once my dad totally embarrassed everybody involved when he starting chatting it up with this middle-aged man at the Anchorage theater. And yes, striking up a conversation with a complete stranger is totally something my dad would do. As would assuming that the young, pretty woman sitting beside him was his daughter and not only making that assumption but saying so out loud.
Hello?
They were obviously a couple, and I knew that from the start, but I couldn’t explain to you how I figured it out right away and good old Dad didn’t. Well, it was the same thing on the plane. I looked at that middle-aged, balding man, looked at the teen girl he was traveling with, and I knew they weren’t right. I kept watching them, kept trying to figure out what it was about the way they were sitting together that creeped me out.
Knowing what I know now, I almost wish I’d said something sooner. But who could tell if that would have helped? Anyway, I kept watching this couple that certainly wasn’t a romantic couple and almost certainly wasn’t related if I were to trust my instincts. But what was I supposed to do? Just walk up to the flight attendant and tell her that some old guy on the plane was weirding me out?
So I was keeping half of my attention on those two and half of my attention on my roommate. Mr. Math Babe had moved back to his old seat to work on grading papers or something, so it was just Kennedy and me. Talking about what?
They say that when you’re in the midst of intense danger, your brain focuses in on the smallest, sometimes most random details. A kind of protective measure so that you can avoid that particular danger again, I suppose. Honestly, you’d have to ask my roommate about that. She’s the science nerd. But you’d think, given everything that was about to happen, my conversation then with Kennedy would somehow be forever seared into my memory.
Except it isn’t.
I’d like to think that we had some heavy, weighty discussion about God, the afterlife, anything. But like I said, Kennedy and I didn’t usually talk religion. At all. She’s quiet. Unassuming in her I’m-going-to-study-until-three-o’clock-in-the-morning-and-ace-all-my-tests overachieving kind of way.
My best guess? We were talking about things like how excited I was for Kaladi Brothers coffee once I landed back in Alaska and whether or not I thought I’d take Math Babe up on his offer for drinks at the airport.
Sometimes I hate how frivolous I can be. I mean, if I’d had any idea what was about to happen, if I had any clue how close I’d come that day to spending an eternity in hell … Sometimes I want to grab Kennedy by the shoulders and shake her and demand, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Except now that I’m a Christian myself, I totally get it. It’s not like you get saved and all of a sudden have this unavoidable urge to convert the whole world. Or maybe you even have the inklings of an urge, but you talk yourself out of it. I don’t want to scare him away. I don’t want her to think I’m judging her. I don’t want them to assume I’m some kind of closed-minded, religious nut-job weirdo.
I get it. I really do. But it’s sobering, too. Because back when I was convinced I was going to die, I was scared out of my mind. Scared that maybe I wasn’t good enough for heaven after all. It’s only by the grace of God I’m alive today. Except now I’m going to remember the lessons I learned on that flight. I’m not going to take my days for granted anymore. I’m not going to be so flightly that all I care about is getting drinks with some cute math teacher.
And I’m going to thank God every day that he forgave me for my sins and saved me from an eternity of fire and terror. Because I’ve tasted enough fire and terror in this life alone. I certainly don’t want it chasing me into the afterlife.
I’m saved now. And I thank God for that. But it’s terrifying to think of how close I came to the end without knowing him at all.
How close I came to dying with no hope or chance of salvation whatsoever.