God doesn’t give us all the details, because He trusts us.
Each of us has a place that feels like heaven, a place where it’s easier to sense God’s creativity expressed in love and joy, mountains and streams. For my family and me, it’s a lodge we built at the end of an inlet in British Columbia, Canada. It’s a place where the waters of the Pacific are rimmed by eight-thousand-foot snow-capped mountains. A few times a year, killer whales bob slowly through the inlet and you can hear them exhale across the glassy water. Untouched cedar forests are filled with trees that were saplings before cars were invented. The Lodge is a dream more than twenty-two years in the making. It started with a couple of tents the first year, then eventually we added a lodge and surrounding buildings with enough beds for seventy people. It has become our place for restoration and adventure. God is somehow easier to find there.
But with all the beauty come some small inconveniences. There are no roads for one hundred miles in any direction. We make our own electricity off a glacier on the property, grow our own vegetables, and catch dinner in the ocean and rivers. Getting the things we need, like engine parts, is no small task. Taking a boat to this place is possible, but it’s a long trip. So, when I stumbled on an old DeHavilland Beaver seaplane for sale, I knew it was the solution we needed. All I’d need to learn was how to fly it. What could possibly go wrong?
Beavers are guy planes. If they could make them out of beef jerky, they would. The nine-piston, 500-horsepower engine— called the “Wasp Junior” by the manufacturer—is junior to none and all steel and power. They stopped making these airplanes sixty years ago, so they’re pretty frayed around the edges now. The way you know a Beaver engine is out of oil is when it stops leaking.
The fuselage has an old-world craftsmanship to it. It’s not made from sheet metal or pre-fab fiberglass. It’s pure tough, and looks like it could take some hits from heavy guns or bears or avalanches or preschool kids and keep going. It’s the kind of plane Indiana Jones would fly out of a remote jungle. Actually, Harrison Ford owns a Beaver and in a couple of movies, this actually happened. A Beaver has pontoons because it’s made to land on water instead of a runway. When we’re at the Lodge, I usually fly out every week or two and fill it up with things we need—like ice cream and Pop Tarts—and fly back.
Going to the Lodge is something we count the days for in the Goff family. Every year as school winds down in late May, spring fever takes over on steroids. The house gets charged with planning and anticipation for the trek north for the summer. When our kids were in school, it was downright torturous. They’d be stuck in first-period English knowing a few weeks later they’d be skipping rocks next to hundred-foot waterfalls and foraging for dinner.
We try to get up to the Lodge a different way each year. Richard graduated from high school and we were looking for some adventure, so we bought some Harleys and Triumphs and rode motorcycles there. We started in Mexico and crossed North America, bottom to top. None of us had ever been on the highway with a motorcycle before. We figured we’d learn what we needed to know on the way. By the time we got to San Francisco, we could even change gears. Another year, Richard, who is infinitely winsome, led us on an amazing adventure as we fixed up a 1971 Volkswagen Bus. Richard drove it up to Canada, and he and Adam drove it back. Richard kept that bus for years and still leads us with creativity and laughter.
Adam was going into his senior year of high school. He was normally a great student, really disciplined and focused. But at that point, high school just felt kind of over to him. He had most of what he needed to get into college, and the last year felt like a punishingly slow victory lap.
One evening close to the start of the school year, I asked to see Adam’s class list. He went up to his room and was there for a long time. When he came back downstairs to the kitchen table where I was sitting, he stared at his feet as he reluctantly handed it over. I looked at the list from top to bottom and laughed. “Where are the classes?” He tried to hold back a grin but didn’t do a very good job.
His class list was ridiculous. I don’t remember exactly, but I think he was the hall monitor for one period, cleaned erasers for another, had an art class, and was working in the school office the rest of the day. This was the schedule of a guy with his feet up on the handlebars and his fingers woven together behind his head.
Sure, I was sympathetic. Adam was beyond bored with school. Nothing really lit him up anymore. I remember the same thing happening to me in high school. Rather than coming down on Adam about his class list, we put our heads together and came up with a plan. What he needed was a challenge big enough to hold his attention for the year.
I had him sign up for a few real classes, and we got rid of all the other time fillers. For his senior year, Adam would leave school at noon each day and head to the airport to get his pilot’s license. Instead of coasting through his last year of high school, he would ride it out at cruising altitude.
Sweet Maria thought Adam flying an airplane every day was a terrible idea, particularly when she heard he would be flying it alone after only a couple of weeks of lessons. I told Adam to think of his after-school program as a pass/fail class. You crash, you fail.
Adam would come home every day and tell us about what he learned. He would describe the cockpit and the preflight checklists. His vocabulary was peppered with new terms like pitch and yaw. He was insistent about telling us the process for buckling the seatbelt in the airplane. I think he did this to show his mom he was taking his lessons seriously and wouldn’t die. Our house wasn’t just a home anymore; it was a Top Gun school. By the end of the year, Adam got a diploma, a pilot’s license, and a leather jacket all in the space of a few days. He also got a seaplane rating so he could fly my Beaver.
There are thousands of remote mountain lakes in British Columbia. These emerald lakes are scattered everywhere, isolated between the steep granite walls of the surrounding mountains. Whenever I fly over them, I size them up and wonder if they would be big enough to land on.
For more than a decade, the boys and I had been eyeing one of these lakes. It freezes solid each winter and is covered by ten feet of snow, but by the end of the summer, the snow and ice melt away, leaving a jaw-dropping alpine lake behind. The lake isn’t large. From the air, it looks like it’s no more than a curbside puddle after a rainstorm. Each time we would fly over the lake, we would nudge one another and wonder out loud whether there was enough lake to land the Beaver—and if we did, would there be enough room to get back out again?
The entry point for the Beaver is a tight squeeze between two towering granite walls. If you make it through, the lake is at the bottom of a two-thousand-foot ravine. Getting there requires an aggressive descent. Each step requires total commitment because both the ravine and the deep bowl containing the lake are too cramped to turn around midway. Once you’re in, there’s no option but to land the plane and prepare for a new takeoff going the other direction. It’s a round trip made of two one-way tickets.
One day, Adam and I were flying the Beaver back from a grocery run to town. As we passed over the lake, I looked over and asked, “What if we land in the lake today?” Adam laughed it off nervously.
“No, I’m serious. Let’s do it!”
Adam stared at me for a long moment, wondering if I meant it. I took that as a yes and dipped the wing toward the lake and we started descending. The cockpit became charged with an intense mixture of fear and excitement.
We leveled the wings a few thousand feet over the lake and started the approach. The entry point was as narrow as it looked from the air. We were reaching the point where we couldn’t turn around or pull out. I looked next to me, and Adam had a steely-eyed resolve as he looked through the windshield. We entered between the mountains and immediately things got much louder. The engine roar bounced off both granite walls and flooded the cockpit with noise. I looked out both side windows to get a visual of my orientation to the rock walls on either side. The wing was a safe but short distance from the granite wall on the right, and I was confident as we navigated this part of the approach. Next, we would descend to the lake.
As soon as we cleared the entrance, I pushed the controls forward. Before, we were looking at the mountains straight ahead. Now, we were looking mainly at the water as we flew the length of the lake. I was stunned by how beautiful it looked but quickly shook that off. No time for sightseeing. Adam’s eyes were big enough to take it in for the both of us.
Even though we were making a sharp descent, we didn’t have enough room to land the Beaver straight in. At the end of the lake, there was a widening of the rock walls just big enough for a final descending turn. It was a tight area to maneuver but was doable. I got as close as I could to the rock wall at the end of the lake and rolled the plane’s wing one more time. We weren’t perpendicular to the water, but it felt like it. I pushed the yoke all the way forward this time to descend the last four hundred feet to the lake.
Once you make that last turn, dropping the last few hundred feet needs to happen in a hurry but with a lot of care. If you land short, you hit the rocks; if you go too long, you hit the trees. If you’ve ever seen a pelican dive-bomb to catch a sardine, it was a lot like that but with more grace and less fish.
After going down the elevator pretty fast, we flattened our descent just a foot or two over the water, flared, and set the plane down. The pontoons skimmed across the calm alpine water and settled in. We slowed to a stop, and I cut the engine and unpeeled my hands from the controls.
Adam and I sat silently for a couple of seconds, staring out the front of the plane. Then we looked at each other and huge grins ripped across both of our faces.
“We did it! We landed in the lake!” We yelled into the silence as we high-fived in the cockpit. After all those years of looking and wondering if it could be done, we now had the answer.
But that was only half the equation. We still needed the answer to the other half. Was there enough lake for us to get out? I could see Adam’s mind grinding out the possibilities and what he would do. So I turned to look at him.
“Okay, Adam, you fly us out of here.”
He shook his head violently, like a Labrador retriever with water in its ears.
“No way.” He had a stern look to him, like he meant business. But I did too.
While he was protesting, I unbuckled myself, got out of the pilot’s seat, and moved to a back passenger seat to make way for the new pilot. There was only one other place to sit, so Adam snapped into the pilot’s seat, gripped the controls, and just stared. It was game on.
Adam taxied the plane all the way back to the weeds at the far end of the lake. He was setting up the plane like a sprinter putting his feet into the starting blocks.
A Beaver needs to be going fifty-two miles an hour before it will lift off the water. If you try to take off when you’re going only forty-eight miles an hour, the pontoon floats will dig into the water and slow you down, and you’ll run out of lake and hit the trees. If you wait until you’re going seventy miles per hour, you’ll run out of lake and hit the trees. Adam knew the stakes, and I reminded him to keep his eye on the speed because what he did would determine where we’d be spending the next few days.
We would need every inch of lake to get up and over the trees at the far end. Sometimes prayers are spoken, and other times they are said in our actions. Adam put his hands on the controls and threw in all the throttle. I said, “Amen.”
I had one eye on the speedometer as the plane picked up speed. Adam got us to thirty and then forty miles per hour. The plane skipped across the surface like a ski boat. He kept increasing the speed while the trees at the other end kept getting bigger in the windshield. When the plane passed fifty-two miles per hour, I started anticipating liftoff. Adam knew what to do to get us off the water.
Adam pulled back before we ran out of lake, and we cleared the tops of the trees as we sailed out of the canyon.
Adam let out a big yelp, and I was woohoo-ing. I was going to give him a chest bump but figured we’d crash, so I didn’t. The lake was disappearing behind us as we flew back toward the Lodge, all grins. I bet Adam was working on the story we would tell everybody when we got there.
I turned to Adam again and said, “Okay, turn the plane around and let’s see if you can land us back in the lake.” Adam started shaking his head again so hard I thought it might fall off. We had a good enough story, right? Then I saw him mentally switch, and he started to turn the plane.
When Adam entered the canyon, I didn’t say anything.
When he started descending into the canyon, I didn’t say anything.
When he made his turn at the wide spot at the end of the lake, he nailed it. I didn’t say anything.
As we made the final descent toward the lake, Adam threw the yoke forward. We were still fifty feet off the water when he flew past where I had landed previously. I didn’t say anything.
Adam landed the plane like a boss, and we came to a stop. Adam had flown into that canyon as an eighteen-year-old, but when the Beaver touched down on the water he looked thirty-five. I looked like I was a hundred and twenty.
The whole time all of this was happening, I was thinking this:
Land. The. Plane.
God isn’t always leading us to the safest route forward but to the one where we’ll grow the most. I knew Adam well enough to know he could land the plane. I’d seen him do it a hundred times in more open waters. I had already told him everything I knew about it. He didn’t need any more instructions; he just needed to see I believed in him enough to let him do it. He didn’t need more words or to know what they meant in Greek or Hebrew. He just needed an opportunity.
The people who have shaped my faith the most did the same for me. They didn’t try to teach me anything; they let me know they trusted me. And that taught me everything. Those moments are forever etched into who I am. I think God does the same with us.
I’ve heard a lot of people say they wish they could hear from God about this or that. Maybe they mean they want to hear His audible voice. I’m not sure. I don’t think literally hearing something is what most of us are after. What we actually want is that extra nudge of confidence from God and the opportunity to move forward courageously to do those things we already know how to do. What a shame it would be if we were waiting for God to say something while He’s been waiting on us to do something. He speaks to me the loudest on the way. Simply put, if we want more faith, we need to do more stuff.
Part of me really understands people’s hesitation. There have been times when I wanted to hear God’s voice—particularly, when something really big mattered to me. The sad truth is, I’m often making too much racket to hear Him. He won’t try to shout over all the noise in our lives to get our attention. He speaks most clearly in the stillness desperation brings.
I’ve also come to see the purpose and beauty in God’s silence. It’s like He’s telling me He knows my heart’s desires and what I’m thinking. He knows what He’s taught me. He’s seen when I’ve succeeded and when I’ve failed. From His point of view, that all rolls up into an unspoken whisper from Him I can almost hear saying, “You’ve got this.” His biggest priority isn’t removing failure as an option but reminding me He loves me as I try. There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “Do not despise these small beginnings.” I love that. It’s a reminder to me God doesn’t just value the big endeavors that work and He isn’t afraid we’ll fail; instead, He delights in our attempts.
God knows we won’t do everything picture-perfect either. If we’re being honest, our mess-ups outnumber our successes, probably by a wide margin. More than once, I’ve been a little too close to the rocks and a little out of position. I’ve come in a little hot, gone a little long, or fallen a little short in the things I’ve attempted.
But God hasn’t been shouting instructions to me as I’ve made mistakes because He doesn’t need to. His silence isn’t indifference; it’s engagement. He isn’t quiet because He’s run out of things to say or is scared about the outcome. It’s because He already believes in me, just as much as He knows the outcome. He already believes in you too. He’s so confident we already know what to do next that He’s willing to be silent even when we ask for His voice. He doesn’t care as much as we do whether we perform perfectly or not. He just wants us to be His while we do it.
Most of us don’t need more instructions; we simply need someone who believes in us. If we’re fortunate, God will surround us with friends who know us so well they’ve stopped trying to control our conduct with endless instructions and instead trust that God is at work in our lives, even if He’s doing things we don’t yet understand.
It’s perfectly normal and okay to feel afraid and confused and stationary. It happens to all of us at one time or another. We shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t understand what a God who says He surpasses all understanding is doing. God doesn’t want us to get stuck scratching our heads or overanalyzing our circumstances. He doesn’t send in all the plays to get us out of our funk, and He doesn’t carpet-bomb us with instructions about what to do next. Instead, He continues to be with us. He’s not entirely silent when He is either. He’s sent us books about Him and has included a lot of letters, and He’s sent us friends too. He’s given us successes and failures—plenty of both. He’s written things on our hearts like love and grace and patience and compassion so we can write those things on the hearts of our friends. We’re God’s calligraphy. He doesn’t do this so our words will look better, but because He sees the beauty in our lives.
When we dream up something where the outcome seems uncertain and we don’t hear God’s voice, what if God isn’t saying anything to us because He’s already said it? Like my time with Adam flying into the lake, I can picture God sitting beside each of us, not confused or afraid but confident we have all the information we need. We may not have had experience with the circumstances we’re presently facing, but He’s allowed us to experience a lifetime of other things to prepare us for what is coming next.
He knows that without risk we can’t grow. God didn’t promise us a safe life. Instead, He said He would give us a dangerous, courageous, and purposeful one if we’ll take Him at His word and stay engaged. Sometimes God is confidently quiet. He doesn’t give us more explanations. He knows we don’t need more words of instruction. The moment we take even a tiny shuffle forward, what God is already thinking about us is this: I love you. You’ve got this. You know enough.
What big idea do you have that you’ve not pursued because you didn’t know if it would work? Who have you wanted to reach out to in love but were afraid you’d be rejected? Who has broken your heart? Who took advantage of you in a business deal? Who misunderstood you? Who do you need to forgive? Now’s your time. Don’t wait any longer. You know what to do. You’ve got this. You know enough.
Go land the plane.