This morning, I awakened to check the flight status of my daughter, Anna. She is returning home from a month away hosting writing teams in both Spain and Morocco. For the last week, Anna and some of her friends had some downtime in Paris. As I slept, Anna boarded her flight home.

When I checked on Anna’s flight status via Delta Airlines online program, it depicted a tiny graphic of an airliner imposed on its flight path from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to SeaTac in Seattle. Anna’s cartoonish looking little aircraft appeared so small as it was flying past Iceland. I found myself reaching out and touching my computer screen praying for safety and blessing over my daughter as she flew over the vast expanse of the cold north Atlantic.

Those of us who watch our loved ones in a time of personal transition can appear like a father checking the flight status of his daughter. When they seem so far away, we need to learn how to trust God. We want to add to their process, but cannot. They are out of reach. Just as I have to trust God and the Delta pilots to get Anna home safely, we need to learn how to trust God more deeply in times of transition for those we love. It felt strangely vulnerable to me seeing the little moving cartoon of an aircraft on Delta’s flight status map knowing that in that small image flying over a dark and cold ocean was my daughter. In our place of vulnerability, we learn how to trust.

In a way similar to me reaching out and touching the computerized image of Anna’s aircraft to pray and bless her journey home so it can be with you if you have a loved one in the middle of a life-transition and you choose to exchange your fear for trust and your worry for rest. Maybe the person you are concerned about is not a daughter returning home from a wonderful trip abroad. Maybe yours is a prodigal child coming home after making some unwise decisions, or a spouse who left you but is now returning home or a friendship that went sideways now transitioning toward restoration. 

When prayer and blessing are your only options, God will use those two disciplines to test your willingness and ability to rest and trust Him in a more profound way. Rest and trust will be what God uses to prepare you to welcome people home when they finally complete a season of transition. That preparation will be part of a miracle of the reunion that will come when we learn how to rest and trust God to accomplish the impossible