He sat down next to me.
I barely acknowledged his presence, and continued to talk to Erica on my other side.
I opened my bag of stupidly expensive Costa Rican chocolate, and for no reason at all offered one to him.
“No. No thanks,” he said.
Who in their right mind turns down chocolate?!
… “You know what, I actually would like one.”
That’s what I thought, mister sassy pants.
Before we even took off, a window had been opened by the exchange of chocolate and he began pouring out his story to us, seemingly for no reason at all.
Heroin addiction.
Money wasted.
Relationships shattered.
Dreams lost.
Suicidal thoughts.
It was all so heavy. I could see it in his eyes that it was too much for him to carry anymore. He was in Costa Rica for a week trying to find a miracle herb that’s supposed to clean out all traces of heroin from the system. A re-start button, if you will. Withdrawal avoidance. A second chance.
“It was supposed to work. Why didn’t it work? What am I supposed to do now? I can’t go home.”
He looked like a lost boy. He was so close to giving up. He wanted to land in Ft. Lauderdale so he could go find his next fix and lose himself.
Beads of sweat were forming above his eyebrows.
His legs were restlessly bouncing up and down, up and down.
He couldn’t get comfortable.
He couldn’t eat.
Erica began sharing with him stories about her brother and his struggle with addiction. I began sharing stories of my brother and his struggle with addiction. We were encouraging him. Reassuring him of his purpose in life.
“It’s not too late. It’s never too late to get your life back. You need to fight.”
I sat there as he processed what we were saying to him, and God blew me away with the truth and reality of the situation.
“I want you to know, my friend Jourdan was supposed to be sitting where you are right now. She had to go home for this month, though. This flight is full. That seat you’re sitting in, it was made for you. You are supposed to be here sitting with us right now. It is not an accident. It’s all apart of the plan.”
We continued talking the entire flight.
The longer we talked the more relaxed he became.
He stopped sweating.
He stopped fidgeting.
He stopped panicking.
He fell asleep for the first time in days.
God was healing him right before our eyes. He was covering him with peace. He was reminding him of his life’s significance.
“I’m going to get off this plane when we land and check into a rehab facility.”
Woah, what?
Over the course of a four-hour flight, God used Erica and I to talk this man off the edge of a cliff. He walked onto that plane ready to end it all, hopeless and lost and unsure of what the future held.
We walked off the plane together, and we were able to spend the time in the customs line with him cracking up and laughing because this man was funny, and silly and outrageous.
His addiction was not who he was. It wasn’t his identity. It was something he had allowed to take him too far down a dangerous road, and until that moment he hadn’t been able to find his way back.
We walked outside and into the warm, soothing Florida air. We prayed over him. We declared life over him. We asked that God would protect and heal him. We asked that he would be given the strength to fight for his life.
During debrief just a few days before, Paul said something extremely profound in his devotional: “life is a beautiful battle”.
That truth was never more evident to me than in that moment when we hugged this man goodbye.
We have to be ready to fight.
Fight for our selves.
Fight for the people God lays in our path.
Erica and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes and I whispered, “welcome to the second half of the race.”
Welcome indeed.
