removing the pressure

5 A.M. flight reflections

Saturday morning, I sat on a 5 A.M. flight to Dallas, Texas. Leaning my head against the window, Apple wired headphones in my ears, and my Clairo Spotify Mix on rotation, I heard a scream beneath the layers of my own playlist of sounds. I raised my hand to my ear, dark cherry polished fingers selecting my earbud for removal to investigate the screams. As soon as I removed my earbud, it was clear that it was a the cry of a baby. And one like I have not heard in a long time. One that made my own maternal instincts kick in to save it. I couldn’t even find it in myself to be aggravated in that moment, I only wanted to pray.

I could blame the tenderness toward this baby on the mentioned maternal instinct, but I think it also could have been that I saw, or heard myself in this infant, that I related to them. I noticed the baby cried the hardest, high-pitched, provoking screams particularly when the altitude altered. For this reason, I assume the baby cried because the in-ear pressure was simply too much.

And I thought to myself, if I as a grown woman hate this feeling (and know how to solve it), how much more a baby? Imagine feeling like you’re being stabbed in your ears with pressure like you’ve never experienced, and having no clue how to find relief. And I understood the excruciating nature of that experience. To feel the pressure and not know how to remove it.

I prayed for the baby to find some solace, for their ears to be released. And I thought someday, you too will learn how to yawn or swallow when your ears are pained by the pressure in your ears. I did.

This is not a piece about aircraft pressure.

I often feel like a young child in the hands of God, feeling equally as helpless as a baby screaming when there is too much pressure. But God has Fathered me, and taught me how to yawn and swallow when the pressure is too much. And it’s not by stretching my jaws, releasing air, or physically swallowing.

I have found release for the pressures in my life in the place of prayer. I enter the Secret Place as a screaming infant, encounter Him, and am quiet for the rest of the plane ride... or at least until the next drop in altitude. It ebbs and flows. I do not know if this release is because He has placed His own hands on my ears and delivered me from the pressure, or if it simply becomes more bearable because He is holding me.

More times than not, I lean towards the latter. Sometimes I am delivered from the pressure, and other times, He graces me Himself to handle the pressing. 2 Corinthians 4:8 says, "We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;" so it is finalized that I am not exempt from a life of pressing.

Survival is an option though, and victory is promised. So whether it’s learning how to release the pressure when possible or how to suffer it when called to, as God’s children, we are in Good, Good Hands and can sit with our Father on the crackled leather seats of the plane, full of faith that we will make it to our destination.

With love,

Rebecca