“Call us when you get this message.”

Shit. When I got the voice mail I just knew something was wrong. My parents back in San Antonio wanted me to call them. My mind raced as I immediately found a quiet spot in the office and braced myself listening to the line ring until my dad’s voice cut across the distance…

“We got some mail delivered to you at the house and didn’t know if you wanted us to open it or…”

See, my parents are doing their best to adapt to new technology and are usually pretty hip for Baby Boomers. They are on facebook, dropbox, and they have an ipad2 with a slightly cracked screen (sorry about that, Dad). But if there’s one area I would single out for improvement it would be texting. Low priority stuff can be sent in a text and I can get to it when I have time without an unnecessary panic attack.

I explained this to them and all had been good until February 18th when I glanced at an incoming message to see the words “lung cancer” staring back at me. Apparently I wasn’t clear that there are some things that you SHOULD discuss over the phone. They’re learning.

When I read his text I was immediately pulled into a new reality where the word ‘CANCER’ clung to each thought like a… well, a cancer. Apparently in this new world I’m bad at metaphors.

Fast forward a few days and I’m sitting in a hospital room with my dad watching the Spurs blow out the Kings. He was recovering well from surgery – amazingly well – and he was going home in the morning. Just 2 days earlier, doctors had been inside his chest removing a portion of his lung and hopefully all the disease that threatened him. As part of the operation they sampled the lymph nodes for tests to see if the cancer was showing any signs of spreading. Those results would be the next step in this journey.

Fast forward a few more days and I’m saying goodbye to my family. After a week in Texas I was headed to the airport back to Phoenix and the life I put on hold. Dad’s recovery was progressing at a more realistic pace since he got home. It would be weeks before his skin, muscles, and lungs found a sense of normalcy and slowly the nerve endings in the area were waking up from their anesthesia nap and were in rotten moods.

The day I left I accompanied my parents to his first post-surgery doctor visit. I recorded the session secretly with my phone because I wanted to have a record of the good news. To our disappointment, the biopsy results hadn’t come in yet. That afternoon we called the lab and left a message but I found myself sitting in an airplane frustrated that I was leaving without getting confirmation that this whole ordeal was a blip in my dad’s past.

As we pulled away from the gate, the flight attendant made an announcement: The pilot has made the airport radio traffic available to us on channel 9 of our armrest audio ports. I had accidentally left my headphones at my parents’ house (Mom & Dad if you’re reading this… mail them?) but I fished out the unquestionably unsanitary free headphones from the seat back in front of me.

“United 542 contact San Antonio departure 33 point 2251”
“Southwest 241, make altitude 6,000 feet slow to 210”

I was fascinated listening to the traffic controllers from the tower getting the plane in the air then handing them off to the separate team that organized the ballet of all the arriving and departing flights. As we climbed into the sky I heard a controller give an order:

“United 542, turn right heading three six zero”

Within a few seconds the wing of the plane on the right side dipped and we banked to the right. I was reveling in my inside information. I knew that was going to happen! All these other losers on the flight reading magazines or cuddling with their loved ones had no idea that was going to happen!

But then it occurred to me… before I discovered Channel 9, I didn’t trust the pilot any less. I was comfortable in my seat sure that I was going to get where I was going. It reminded me of how I was dealing with dad’s test results and in an even broader sense… all of my life. I want to plug in and get the play-by-play of what is happening and I know what to expect. I want to know what dad’s test results will be. But we don’t get that in life. We have the opportunity to trust that God will pilot us. We may not always know or like our destination (Chicago Midway, I’m looking at you) but we can relax and trust that the God who gives the universe purpose is also weaving our lives into the fabric of His Story.

One more thing about Channel 9. As we approached the Houston airport I started hearing the controllers rattle off instructions quickly to several incoming flights. They were precise in their instructions as they lined us up for landing. One controller even advised one pilot not to delay in his movements because another flight was coming in behind him. Our pilot was told there was a 737 on the runway three miles in front of us. Suddenly I was aware of all the variables and things that could go wrong. I was listening to numbers and lingo and I was trying not to imagine one controller rubbing a dry eye contact and accidentally transposing two numbers then suddenly I’m wearing a life vest and wondering why my oxygen bag isn’t inflating.

My point is that sometimes the knowledge of what is being orchestrated around us isn’t the comfort we assume it would be. Sometimes things line up well for us. Sometimes life is crueler than random chance would be. But I believe now more than ever that there is a reason and a rhyme to it. From his diagnoses, to my flights, and even the meals that we ate during the ordeal – everything was provided for in such a special way that it seems silly to look for new reasons to worry.

So I’m putting my headphones away, kicking back and trusting when I arrive at my final destination the only thing I’ll be missing is my emotional baggage.

The metaphors are back!