LAURA PATTERSON | GUEST

Three years ago, I found myself in a holding pattern over the city of Nashville. Only minutes after the pilot instructed the cabin and crew to prepare for descent, the plan seemed to change. I realized over the next 30 minutes, with no announcement from the cockpit, that we were not landing after all. Instead, we were circling the Nashville airport in a racetrack pattern, suspended at 30,000 feet.

For someone with anxious tendencies, combined with the fact that I was traveling alone, I began to feel unsettled. I focused on deep breathing and tried to distract myself. But I knew something was wrong—why weren’t we landing at our intended destination?

Perhaps the experience of a holding pattern feels familiar as you settle into the realities of a new school or ministry year. You bought tickets to an intended destination, packed your bags appropriately, and now that you are in the air, you are confronted with the fact that you are not actually in control.

Unknown Flight Path

As far as I can recall, every past school and ministry year has brought with it a new or ongoing holding pattern. It’s like a spiritual homework assignment set on repeat. And, as a new year of learning and growing is now underway, I find myself wondering how this journey will go.

As a mom, I find myself wondering about my children’s academic progress and the development of healthy peer relationships. I wonder what new and unexpected struggles might surface for my child with special needs. As a ministry leader, I wonder how women’s Bible study will go this year– what spiritual growth will manifest in my own heart and that of my sisters in Christ. I wonder what church conflict or crisis of faith lurks ahead.

The reality of unexpected circumstances and outcomes makes my anxiety go full throttle. I rehearse all the possibilities for what could go wrong. I catastrophize and I project far into the future. Before I know it, I come to believe that the holding pattern will certainly result in a crash landing. In doing so, I have exchanged faith for anxiety because when I attempt to use anxiety to mitigate potential losses, I lose something far greater: the invitation to receive God’s presence, wisdom, and purposes in this year’s flight plan.

Holding patterns are training grounds for learning to trust the pilot. And while trusting the pilot doesn’t mean feelings of sorrow, uncertainty, and anxiety will never surface, it does mean peace is possible. Not only that, but it is promised by One who does not give as the world gives (John 14:27). Peace comes when we rest in the fact that we are held by the One who is sovereign and by believing there is a reason the plane does not always land immediately or as expected.

Unexpected Destination

I would never have guessed that my holding pattern over Nashville would give way to a surprise landing in Memphis past my bedtime. But as I set foot in the Memphis airport, I saw God’s provision in a way I would have missed had there not been a delay and a detour: a family friend happened to be on that same flight and offered to drive me from Memphis to Nashville in the middle of the night.

As I look back on that night and remember my anxiety and irritation, I am thankful that uncertainty in life is not a math problem to be solved. We have nothing to prove when a holding pattern is our homework assignment because our Father isn’t sitting in heaven with a red pen, ready to grade our papers. Rather, He is inviting you and I to set down our pencils, exhale deeply, and look to Jesus. In Jesus, we can humbly confess our vulnerability, repent of our prideful desires to control our circumstances, and entrust our souls to the One who is writing a bigger story.

We can look to the One who was faithful through a three-year holding pattern of public ministry, waiting for His hour to come. The One who in Gethsemane asked for a different journey and yet submitted Himself to the destination of Golgotha. The One who kept silent in a rotation of unjust trials. The One who held on to the sins of many for six excruciating hours before saying at exactly the right time, ‘It is finished!” And the One who remained in the grave for three days before He rose again.

In Christ, we have a helper in all our holding patterns and hope that they will come to an end.

For one day there will be no more disrupted patterns of descent. No storm will pop up and divert the passengers. No announcement from the cockpit will create anxiety. No traveler will be stranded in a strange city.

One day, the plane will land in Zion.

Photo by Shawn on Unsplash