“So there is a delay of unknown time . . . ” my daughter’s text read, and she feared she wouldn’t make her connecting flight in time.
We had just dropped my oldest daughter off at the airport, in order for her to return to college in California.
As any mother of an adult child knows, sending that child off on an airplane far away stretches taut the mother’s heartstrings.
Even though I knew she was indeed returning to the school where God wants her, I began missing her even before we hugged goodbye.
And then a complication in travel arose, triggering anxiety, my old nemesis.
Immediately, my mind flew to the worst possible scenario: my daughter stranded overnight in an airport far away, having to navigate alone the difficulties of delayed flights and arranging new transportation to her destination.
“This is a good learning experience,” my nodding husband said, forever pulling the good out of everything, maddeningly. “This is all a part of traveling.”
This was a small blip for him, a world traveler, but to me, a homebody, it was a mountainous first-time experience.
Surrender to Our Lord
Unable to do anything else except wait to hear of new flight information from my daughter, I flew to Our Lord at church, my only refuge.
There at Mass, I poured out my heart to Him, baring all of the newly erupted anxiety, striving to surrender it to Him and unite it to His sacrifice on the altar.
With all my might, I strained to place it all into His merciful heart as He came to me in the Eucharist.
And then . . . He blessed me with His peace, and I became keenly aware of His desire for more trust from me.
Every day I pray, “Lord, I love you so much, please help me to love You more.”
Now I know I need to add another prayer to the first: “Lord, I trust You so much, please help me to trust You more.”
A lesson in trust
This little lesson in trusting Him more was precisely what I needed to learn that day.
And in His mercy, Our Lord taught it to me as gently as possible, for when I emerged from church, a text from my husband said the situation was resolved: The delay had only been 20 minutes long, and my daughter was on her airplane as originally planned.
I turned around and walked right back into church to offer prayers of thanksgiving, while the rest of my daughter’s journey, alone and heading 2,000 miles away, went off without a hitch.
Cling to Him always
Truly, these lessons help develop over time exactly what we need from Our Lord.
In good times and in trials, He wants to be with us, making us know without a doubt His overwhelming love for each of us.
We cling to Him like tiny plants cling to rocks beside rushing rivers. The torrents of life can rush past us, or even over us, but if we are rooted in the confidence of Our Lord, nothing can tear us away from Him, our rock and our refuge.
Now, as I face the school year knowing I won’t see my oldest daughter until Christmas, I cling tightly to Our Lord with the roots of confidence He is gently asking me to grow.
Let the waters of anxiety wash past me.
With each reception of Our Lord in the Eucharist, He is mercifully showing me how.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four, works at St. John the Baptist School in Waunakee and the Cathedral of St. Bernard of Clairvaux in Madison.