Paper Airplanes

Picture credit to Jennifer Holmes, Cousin of Blake Hubbard.

In life, there are those moments, those singular experiences that leave one totally and completely without words. Even for this want to be writer so rarely without words, recent experiences have put me in a totally....well... wordless frame of mind.

Over the last three weeks, I have on more occasions than I can count sat down to write a note or card, to blog, to get ideas of some description on paper. I find...... nothingness. I sit with pen in hand....waiting. Nothing comes to mind. There is only silence. My words float and flutter aimlessly just out of reach in my writer's mind. Like paper airplanes I cannot quite rein them in.

Three weeks ago, a child was lost....a child I once met but didn't really know.....a child who seemingly sometimes preferred the security and solace of small places and yet on that day sought out the wide open expanse of a boy's imagination....a child playing paper airplanes......a child who simply wanted his plane to soar higher. Out with two friends, enjoying one of the unlikely days of this unusual Carolina winter. These children of science and of creativity meticulously fashioned their airplanes and set out to take advantage of the breezes created by the mighty and majestic pines of North Carolina's Triangle. But how to get the best flight, the highest soaring....should we climb?

How can the innocent play of children take such a fatal turn? How can the beautiful amateur flyer be here one moment and gone the next? Parents, family, friends turn to God for answers but in the end must rely on their faith, simply trust that God is in control, and pray that He will somehow comfort all left behind.

They do find great comfort in the knowledge that the child, the paper airplane pilot, is without doubt in the arms of God. They know he had accepted and even reaffirmed Jesus as his Saviour; that though young of age, he strove diligently to be a child of God.

Three years ago, another eerily similar moment took my words. This time a beautiful girl.....a mother concerned about illness, a trip to the hospital, and suddenly and inexplicably an entire town left with no words. This child I did know. This child I did love. This precious dancer child of beautiful words and pictures and thoughts and movement, quite unlike any I know or have known. Such a grown up heart in such a little girl. This child of the liberal arts.....a reader and writer who loved to draw, another indeed remarkable and imaginative child gone so, so soon. This one, too, a young but without doubt true child of God. And again, those left behind find comfort and strength in their faith and in her faith and the absolute knowledge that this beautiful, forever young angel is with her Saviour.

Amidst the innocence of paper airplanes, the unimaginable happens. For a child of so much heart, it is the heart that ultimately gives out. Loved ones on two fronts left with cherished memories. His flight of the paper airplane.....her heart. I am left with mental pictures.....of a charming smile, dancing eyes, a breathtakingly handsome boy, breezes and paper airplanes.....of an astonishingly beautiful girl....a ballerina, the biggest, deepest blue eyes I ever saw and a heart more open than even any adult I know. Yes, I am left with pictures, but the words.....like paper airplanes .... flutter just beyond my reach.