Vapor Trails

One week into my LDS mission, I found myself tramping down a frozen street in Antwerp, Belgium, trying to keep my feet warm and wondering if I could actually do this. Each day, we wandered through the maze of Antwerp's ancient streets, in and out of neighborhoods filled with refugees and illegal immigrants, the snobbish rich and the desperately poor. We walked through the sleet and ice and snow. No one wanted to talk with a soaked American missionary girl who couldn't speak a word of Flemish.

I'd expected rejection, of course, but I hadn't expected to be half-frozen or to be so completely out of my element with the language. I'd learned a bit of Dutch in the missionary training center back home, but the Flemish dialect sounded completely foreign to me, and it was hard to concentrate on the words when my coat was soaked through with icy water. Besides, everyone we talked to seemed to speak some other language anyway—Arabic or French or Mandarin or Spanish. They all seemed angry or sad, although I couldn't be sure. I didn't understand what they were saying.

My companion was about half a block ahead of me, trying to figure out the bus schedule so that we could get to an appointment with a member of our church. I felt bone-tired and scared to death. I wasn't thinking about going home, but over and over, I heard the timid voice inside my head saying, "You can't do this for a year and a half. You can't you can't you can't."

I looked up in desperation, praying that the blasted snow would let up for a moment. As I did, my eye caught a patch of color—a break in the clouds and a reminder that the sky still existed, and it was beautiful, bright, happy blue.

It was a miracle. The sun! I called out to my companion, but she wasn't listening. I watched as I walked, marveling. There are places in the world where they see blue sky all day long! Places like Honolulu, South Africa. Why hadn't I been assigned to live there!? There's no snow in Honolulu. Missionaries don't freeze to death in South Africa.

As my hungry eyes snatched at the blue, a single airplane passed overhead and crossed my miraculous patch of sky. Behind it, a long vapor trail followed its progress. The plane disappeared behind the clouds, but the vapor trail remained, cutting in half my sky.

Photo by Richard Ashley

Revelation comes like the falling snow, sometimes: soft, gradual, still. Other times it comes like a sudden glimpse of a blue sky and a wandering vapor trail, sudden and absolute. I understood something so clearly in that moment. Watching that vapor trail, I realized that I had 18 months to make my mark before I would be the one in an airplane, making a vapor trail above a country that I already loved in spite of its hard chill. 18 months to live with deliberation and change lives, if I could. "18 months," said the timid inside-my-head voice, "to not freeze to death." But I shrugged it away. I knew what I had to do. And I would do it. Every day would count, every conversation would matter.

Belgium, I decided, would not kill me! I would love it in spite of itself! I would love it to submission! Belgium would regret the day it made war with me!

And with that, I met my companion, smiled, and got to work—frozen toes and all.

Funny what a little old vapor trail can do for you. From that moment on, the glimpse of an airplane in the air or a vapor trail raking the sky was a reminder. Live. Do it right. Work harder. Every time I spotted one, I felt my courage rise and my determination solidify.

Eventually, vapor trails came to mean something else to me. They still motivated me, but they were a reminder of the Person who, in my mind, had sent my first vapor trail at the moment when I would understand—and need—it most. They came to mean little loves notes from the God I love and was trying to serve. They became tender, personal—an intentional sign between my God and me. "Heavenly Father loves you," said each vapor trail, "so work hard and give Him everything you can."

God picked the right sign. Belgium (and the Netherlands, where I would move eventually, abandon my Flemish, and begin to relearn Dutch) rests just below the aerial crossroads of nearly every major airport in Europe. Some days, the sky was literally criss-crossed with vapor trails, seven or eight of them gleaming in the enormous northern sky. Have you ever been showered with affection? Been absolutely secure in someone's love? Those were moments of confidence and joy for me, those impossibly many vapor trails. I loved them.

Photo by Eleleven

A year and a half later, I sat on an airplane, parked on the dark, pre-dawn runway, and cried and cried. Somehow, just as that first vapor trail had predicted, I had fallen in love with Belgium and with Holland. I'd worked hard—not perfectly, but hard—and somehow my heart had seeped into the lowlands, the bicycles and tulips, the people and the place. How could I leave if my heart wasn't with me anymore? The Belgians and the Dutch, they'd stolen it away.

I looked through the window and gasped. That glorious Dutch sun had risen to greet the cold spring day, and the sun lit up vapor trails—layers and layers of them. Thirty vapor trails at least, sharing the sky and climbing toward eternity. I'd never seen so many. I'd never felt so loved. The woman next to me patted my hand. She probably thought that I was on my way to a funeral, the way I was sobbing. She couldn't know that I was crying because I was happier than I'd ever been.



Vapor trails have become a personal miracle. There's one outside my window now, and when I see one, I know that God loves me, likes me, wants me home. It seems like such a silly thing, to take so much meaning from a stripe of water in the sky, but if it helps me remember my heavenly home, what does it matter?



Heavenly Father reminds you every day of how much you're adored, taken care of, and loved. Find your vapor trail.

I promise that its there.