Courage requires vulnerability. We are told to be brave but we aren’t taught to be vulnerable. – Brene Brown

There is something about traveling that makes me all meta. Maybe it’s the buzz of the plane’s engine acting as a virtual sound machine, taking my thoughts into a dreamlike state. Kind of like sitting on a chair lift by myself staring at God’s wondrous creation, the aloneness leaves me no choice but to confront my own consciousness.

In the spring of 2016, on my way to Mexico, I had such an experience. I was reading Anne Lamott’s Small Victories, which in the lightest of circumstances would elicit laughter and tears in the best way possible. When you’re in the middle of a divorce and you know the tendons of your heart are being ripped and healed and separated from the main muscle, those essays force deep introspection. I thought I was going to Mexico with my girlfriend to take a break from work, but I realized at that moment that the trip was going to provide a break from life. I needed to escape the musk and mire of busyness and distraction of a full life of career, friends, and activities. All good things, but distractions all the same.

Earlier that year, I had reached the acceptance phase of grieving. I was even thankful that I was being saved from a life of strife. But I knew deep down there were still hurts to be discovered, brought into the light, and mended slowly, fiber by fiber.

So there I was, reading, laughing, and gently crying – you know, the kind where tears silently and unstoppably pour out of your eye sockets and roll down your cheeks. I am thankful for my plane neighbor who was asleep, dead to the world, and for the other passengers, who if they noticed, followed the general plane etiquette that stops strangers from asking why you’re crying.

You should know that I really hate crying in front of other people. I mean, I don’t think anyone enjoys it per se, but I am more against it than for it. In part, it’s because I’m embarrassed by my own frailty and brokenness. I find it admirable when others seem perfectly comfortable being exposed with their disappointments and aches through raw, public emotion. But for me, there’s an ego that wants everyone to think I am brave and strong. An ugly pride that hates admitting any form or function of weakness, even to myself, let alone to others.

The paradox is that I do feel strong and courageous. I wear the whole Joshua 1:9 command like battle armor: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous and do not be dismayed because the Lord your God is with you no matter where you go.” Here’s the thing I’m realizing – and I’m pretty sure I am last to the party to understand this:

Being brave and strong doesn’t mean there is a complete absence of sadness, or even fear. It’s just continuing to put one foot in front of the other even when your soul is being crushed by the weight of your circumstances. Courage is saying, “Out of my way, doubt!” and pressing on when fear threatens to cement your life to this exact moment and won’t let you move an inch towards the hope you have in Jesus, and the abundant life he promises.

The thing that saved me on that plane trip – that made the tears stop – was the smell of coffee burning the hairs inside my nostrils. What is it about airplane coffee that takes what is normally a delightful aroma and turns it into a stench redolent of a pile of burnt trash from the streets of Mumbai? Seriously. In my experience, every airline shares this issue.

The flight attendant cart rolled by with its aforementioned streets-of-Mumbai funk, immediately distracting me from my emotions and saving my eyes from running out of saline. It’s amazing to me that we have figured out how to make a steel tube miraculously defy all laws of gravity to magically float in the heavens 35,000 feet above the ground and race towards far and distant lands at 500 mph, yet we haven’t figured out how to make pleasant-smelling coffee in our fairy machines. And for this, I am deeply grateful.

[photo taken outside of Merida, Mexico]