Five Years of Running

Young, tall and lean, he folded himself into the aisle airplane seat beside me. Shy, but friendly he quickly introduced himself. Full of promise and plans, he began to tell me about his upcoming wedding plans and visions of buying their first fixer-upper home. The flight was not long, but we quickly developed a kinship of conversation, he eager to tell me of his future and some of his past. His voice grew quiet as I told him of my impending heartache of divorce. Equally willing to share his pain and imperfections, he proceeded to tell me of his Mennonite-like upbringing. Straying from the standards of his family, he led a lifestyle full of alcohol abuse, winding up on his back in a hospital room, looking up at the ceiling and God. "I ran for five years," he said. Nodding, I listened on. My father had been praying that the Lord would stop me. My father was afraid he had prayed a little too hard and was fearful the Lord would not stop at just motorcycle injuries. But He did, and this young boy recovered, with new knowledge of his weaknesses and new determination not to repeat the pattern that led to his almost-fatal DUI on a bike. With a new light in his eye, and his love's name on his lips, he walked quickly off the plane and onto his new life with his fiancee's voice on the other end of his cell phone, eager to continue his ongoing life conversation with her. "Oh," I thought, "to have a future again that one would actually look forward to, instead of behind.". Somewhere I heard a whisper in my soul, a stirring ever so gently, the words of the Bible swelling up in my soul, the Lord will restore what the locusts have eaten. I exited the plane with new hope and a lighter step.