by Alana Terry
Get up, I told myself. You didn’t survive a near-execution just to get yourself trampled to death when you’re only a few minutes short of landing. Get up.
Except I couldn’t. There were too many people. Too many bodies. I couldn’t stand. Couldn’t breathe. Someone stepped on my back. No more air in my lungs. I couldn’t even cough out the smoke I’d just inhaled.
And that’s when I knew it had happened. My luck had finally run out.
I really was going to die.
CHAPTER 13
You ever read any of those stories about people who swear they nearly died and went to heaven? Then they were resuscitated and survived and came back to tell the whole world about their experiences? Apparently Christians are kind of divided when it comes to stories like that. I guess some people think it’s all hocus-pocus, maybe even the work of demons (although I really can’t understand why a demon would try to convince someone they were in heaven, but that’s neither here nor there). Other folks get all into it, write their bestselling books, earn their millions.
I honestly don’t know where I fall on that spectrum. I’ve already told you that I’ve only been a Christian for a couple of weeks. Seriously, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with myself on a Friday night now that I’m not allowed to go out and party, so I’m probably not the best person to ask about convoluted matters of faith and theology.
All I can tell you is what happened to me.
And that’s basically the reason I’m saved now.
I was stuck. I couldn’t move. I don’t know if was my injuries from getting stepped on or what. Maybe it was even a literal demon holding me in place, trying to kill me before I had the chance to turn my life around. I seriously don’t know.
But I couldn’t move. Each time I budged, something caught around my neck. Like something was trying to strangle me.
I was going to die.
And do you know what I thought about? Well it certainly wasn’t tapas. Or Mr. Math Babe. Or how terrible Kennedy would feel once I was dead.
I thought about my family. Wondered if they were following the news already or if they were blissfully waiting for their only child to come home, never suspecting the life was seeping out of my pores with every second.
But more than anything? I thought about that little old lady. Grandma Lucy. The one who stood ready to take a bullet for me.
There are people I’d probably die for. My parents, for one thing. Maybe even Kennedy if it ever came right down to it. Underage victims of human trafficking? I’d be willing to risk my life if I knew it could save them.
But this little old lady stood up for me. Told that deranged General she would take my place.
I suppose if you were looking in from the outside, maybe you’d think it made evolutionary sense, in that cold, calculated Darwinian way. Grandma Lucy was old. Had lived her life. Had passed on her genes, blah, blah, blah. And here I was. Young. Healthy. Strong.
So she was willing to trade places.
But there was more to it than that. I wish I could explain to you what I heard in her voice. Wish I could describe the intensity. You ever watch those superhero movies? There’s a common trope in a lot of them. This old lady with wicked awesome supernatural powers. The kind who can heal you with a touch or strike fear into villains five times their size.
That’s the kind of power I sensed in Grandma Lucy when she stood between me and that gunman. An unmistakable, never before experienced power.
I was agnostic basically my entire life, but I always believed in something divine. Something beyond what science can explain or the eye can see. But I’d never experienced it until that moment. And do you know what it was I felt pouring out of Grandma Lucy?
Love.
She loved me.
Not in the way some do-good Mother Theresa-esque kind of saint would feel warm and fuzzy toward all humanity. This was far more personal.
Far more powerful.
Grandma Lucy loved me. Enough to die in my place, even though she didn’t even know me. Some people look at my dyed hair, my couple extra body piercings, and they write me off as some kind of edgy weirdo. Once at the bookstore I even had a mom tell her child, “Don’t make eye contact with her.” So yeah. I may not be part of a marginalized minority in any real sense of the word, but I certainly have experienced my share of prejudice. Of being written off as “other.”
But Grandma Lucy saw past all that. It was like she was seeing the real me.
Me, Willow Winters. A scared young woman who only wanted to get home to her mom and dad.
And she was willing to die in my place.
She’d already saved my life once. I knew that much. I can’t recall a single word she said in her prayer while she was staring at that gun, ready to take that bullet meant for me, but I can tell you the power I felt behind her words.
In another culture, another religious era, she might have been called a shaman. A spiritual healer. A miracle woman.
Instead, she was just Grandma Lucy. The most powerful woman I’ve ever encountered.
Thinking about her gave me hope, and that’s all I had to cling to as I lay on that cabin floor, smoke burning my lungs, stinging my eyes, draining the life out of me. Grandma Lucy loved me enough to save me.
And she hadn’t done that so I could die here alone.
CHAPTER 14
At one point I ended up passing out. Because apparently that’s what your body tends to do when you’re stuck in a smoke-filled airplane cabin. You know how I was talking about near-death experiences, Christians claiming to go to heaven, all that jazz?
None of that happened to me.
But something did.
I’d like to say I had a dream because that puts it into a neat little easy-to-define category that everyone can relate to. I mean, who hasn’t ever had a dream while they’re asleep?
Except I really couldn’t call it that. Not while maintaining any sense of literary integrity. Imagine a dream that’s even more real than the physical world. Where the moment you’re in it everything flips around and you realize that the world you’ve always called real is actually the dream and you’ve never been truly awake until that very moment.
Then imagine that love isn’t just some esoteric emotion or a word you use to describe how you feel about your family or your dog or your favorite vegan tapas bar. Imagine that in this real world, the one that makes everything you’ve ever known seem like the dream, love is an actual, tangible force. And that force is pouring into you, like the most powerful waterfall you could ever imagine, except instead of drowning it makes you feel like for the first time in your entire existence you’re actually alive.
And part of you doesn’t want to wake up and go back to the real world because this power you feel is so tangible, but you also know you’re not ready to leave the dream yet. There’s more you have to do.
If you can picture all of that, and if you have what could be called the most active imagination out of every human who’s ever lived, you might be able to grasp at least the smallest fraction of what I experienced.
And then the feeling was gone. The dream was done.
And all that was left was terror and fear and pain.
And smoke. So much smoke …
CHAPTER 15
Between the time I passed out and woke up in the Detroit hospital, I have literally no recollection, and so I’m free to make up whatever turn of events I’d like.
My initial go-to is that once we landed, Raul rushed to the back of the cabin, frantically screaming my name until he found me. He knelt down, swooped me up, and raced me off that plane, shouting, “This woman needs a medic!”
Other days, I kind of like the idea of Grandma Lucy walking off that plane (she’s totally fine as I envision the scene in my head because she’s got some kind of Holy Spirit bubble surrounding her that kept the smoke out and the oxygenated air in). Once she gets onto the tarmac, she kneels down, thanks God f
or his protection, and senses with powerfully divine intuition s that I’m in trouble. At which point she prays for God to send a couple angels to get me off the flight, and these heavenly beings are quick to comply.
It’s also quite possible that my rescue was far more mundane, that the first-responders who were on the scene when we made our descent into Detroit were simply doing their job. Which doesn’t make my survival any less miraculous or my saviors any less heroic.
Now, if this were a little Christian novel I was writing, if I were relying on fiction instead of hardcore, actual fact, I’d probably wrap things up with me on my knees in a hospital room, folding my hands together, praising God for his salvation and begging him to forgive my sins. At which point, I’d probably commit my entire life to becoming a missionary in Africa, taking selfies with a bunch of orphans, all that jazz.
Well, I hate to let you down, but I’ve got to tell things like they are.
Yes, I experienced my first real taste of divine intervention and heavenly power on that flight. No, I will never forget that sense of love that poured into my soul after I passed out.
But that doesn’t mean I turned my life around the second I woke up in the hospital. Even now, weeks after my conversion, I really couldn’t say my life’s been turned around. Turns out this whole Christian walk is a lot harder than it looks, and it took me quite a while before I was ready to actually bend the knee to Christ (figuratively, I should say; I never actually got down and knelt, which Kennedy as well as her pastor assure me isn’t required for salvation).
The other thing you probably wouldn’t expect me to talk about right here is the nightmares I still have about that flight. Sure, I can joke all I want about getting rescued by Math Babe Raul or irresistible SWAT teams in their kick-butt, bullet-proof gear. But more often than not, my dreams are about being stuck in that smoking cabin, realizing I’m not going to make it out alive, knowing that I’m not ready to die.
I guess that just goes to show that even when God swoops down and literally saves you out of the pit of hell, sometimes it still takes a little while before you’re ready to acknowledge him.
After our rescue, I spent my entire semester break in Alaska with Kennedy thinking about what happened to us. Asking her questions about what it would mean if I actually were ready to become a Christian. And she wasn’t pushy. Wasn’t over-zealous to get me to sign on the dotted line. I think she knew I needed to figure all this out in my own time and in my own way.
I was so scared of flying back to campus after all we went through (we were both basket cases on that flight back to campus, truth be told), that I made my first bargain with God. If he gave me that same sense of power and love and protection out on the flight back to campus, I’d spend the upcoming semester studying the Bible and deciding for real if I was ready to get serious about this whole Christianity thing.
Well, there wasn’t anything nearly as dramatic as when I’d passed out in the cabin, but I wasn’t quite as scared as I expected I’d be either. I guess I can say God met me halfway.
So I did the same for him.
Kennedy and I started doing this Bible study together some nights when we were both in our dorm room and she didn’t have her nose buried in her books. I found a couple preachers online I liked and began listening to their podcasts. It was right before Valentine’s Day if I remember correctly that I told Kennedy I was ready to go ahead and jump into the Christian life. At the time, I really didn’t know what that meant, and to be honest, I’m not sure that even now I do. Like I said, I don’t have a clue when it comes to debates about theology or all that jazz. What I do know is that I was saved by God, first physically on that flight and then spiritually just a few weeks ago.
Took me long enough, some believers might say. But I didn’t want to jump into something one minute only to decide a few days or weeks later it wasn’t going to work out. I knew that if I wanted to commit, I needed it to be serious.
Am I serious about my faith now? I think so. Like I said before, I’ve given up partying, at least the aspects of that lifestyle that are inherently sinful. That’s a pretty big deal for someone like me. And I’m studying my Bible with Kennedy. We’re praying together too. It’s like we’re an old married couple saying our bedtime prayers before lights out. Sometimes I feel bad that I wasn’t instantaneously turned into Miss Sunday School Goodie-Goodie like Kennedy right away, but I suppose everybody matures differently, right? At least that’s the excuse I’m telling myself.
Sometimes, I’m a little embarrassed that it took something so drastic as getting my flight hijacked, witnessing a murder, and nearly dying to get me to accept Jesus. I mean, some people hear the gospel once and decide to be saved. And I’ll be the first to admit that the survivor’s guilt is awful. I may not be the best at praying yet, but I do pray for poor Tracy’s family every time I think about her.
Maybe one day I’ll look up her two kids and tell them how brave their mom was. How much she loved them. How she didn’t want to leave them.
But for now, I’m still covering the basics. Trying to remember to read my Bible each day. It still doesn’t make sense how I could have done so many sinful things and I only had to pray once for God to forgive me, so I’m spending a lot of time confessing right now. Just in case I forgot some things the first time.
I think about Kennedy, about how mature she is in her faith. Then I compare that to Grandma Lucy, who I never did manage to find after our plane landed. It can be overwhelming at times, realizing how much I still have to learn. How far I still have to go.
But I guess that’s part of the Christian journey. One step at a time. And maybe what matters isn’t whether or not you’re taking baby steps or giant leaps as long as you’re headed in the right direction.
I certainly hope so at least.
My name is Willow Winters. I’m a theater major. Airplane hijacking survivor. Blue-haired second fiddle.
And now, by the grace of God, I’m saved.
***
Thanks for reading Terror in the Skies, book 1 in the Turbulent Skies novella series.
If you’re ready to jump into more fast-paced, action-packed adventures featuring other characters aboard Flight 219, dive into Refined by Fire, book 2 in the Turbulent Skies Christian Thriller series today.
Meredith’s the president of a thriving Christian ministry … until back-biting and political rivalry get her kicked off her own board. Discouraged, heart-broken, and desperate not to grow bitter, Meredith boards Flight 219 where she meets a mother, her child, and the God who’s far bigger than all of their fears.
The Turbulent Skies Christian Thriller series delivers a string of interconnected novellas about strangers traveling together aboard a doomed flight. Find out why Christian fiction readers can't stop raving about this unforgettable, fast-paced series you can devour in a single sitting.
Buy Refined by Fire for an unforgettable high-altitude adventure full of danger, suspense, and life-changing faith. Keep scrolling for a sneak peek, or if you really can’t wait, download your next binge-read immediately!
***
CHAPTER 1
Logan Airport
Meredith found an empty seat at the gate and sat down with a weary sigh. She still couldn’t believe the past 24-hours had really happened. That after fifteen years of service, of pouring her blood and sweat and tears into her ministry, it had come to such a crashing end.
Maybe it couldn’t have been helped. She’d seen the handwriting on the wall a few years ago, hadn’t she? But still, she’d founded Living Grace. Who would have thought it would carry on without her? Could it carry on without her?
Time would certainly tell.
She watched holiday travelers bustling past her gate, men and women and children off to Christmas dinners and vacations with grandparents. Meredith didn’t have any close family. The ministry had been her family.
Which made what she’d just gone through akin to divorce.
/> No, not divorce. More like watching your child torn away from you, knowing how helpless you were to intervene.
Maybe she’d feel differently if she’d been asked to resign as a result of some kind of sin issue or scandal. No. The board asked for her resignation and showed her a copy of the press release that would come out Wednesday. Because we feel God has called us to walk down different paths … It made it sound so holy, so righteous.
Well, some things couldn’t be changed. The last thing Meredith wanted was to become a victim. She’d already decided to allow herself exactly two days of pity. That was all. And then she was moving forward.
She didn’t have any other choice.
Just a few more hours until she was back home. Back in her cozy Grand Rapids condo, where she planned to heat herself up some hot chocolate, bury her feet in her favorite slippers, put on some nice, relaxing worship music, and allow herself a good cry. Until then, she planned on holding it all together.
After all, she had a plane to catch.
It felt strange sitting here. How many times had she flown in and out of Boston to meet with the Living Grace board? How many days out of the past fifteen years had she spent in the air? Meredith thought back to the prayer she prayed when she was in her twenties, dreaming of a speaking career, ministering to Christian women. Meredith asked God for the chance to preach to women in all fifty states. Well, she had that checked off her bucket list. And quite a few foreign countries too. In the past fifteen years as the director of Living Grace Ministries, she’d spend thousands of days away from home. Weeks away from home.
Years away from home, if you were to add up their cumulative effect.
And all for this.
She didn’t want to get bitter. She didn’t want to be angry. She promised herself not to allow bitterness to take root in her wounded soul. In spite of how betrayed she felt, in spite of the terrible, sinful mistake she knew the board had made, she had to be the bigger one. The mature one. The forgiving one. And maybe once she got home, soaked away her sorrows in a scalding hot bubble bath, she’d feel more gracious. Right now, she had to resist the urge to whip out her phone, log onto social media, and tell the entire world what just happened.