Seat 2A

   I don't change my airline seats once I book them. Ask anyone who travels with me — 14A is 14A. I pick it, I lock it in, I move on. So, I cannot tell you why, the night before my flight from Harrisburg to Charlotte last week, something nudged me to open the app and move myself up to 2A when I checked in online. I didn’t think twice. I just did it.

   I think about that little click a lot now. Because that one decision — made for no reason I could name at the time — set the table for one of the most tremendous hours I’ve spent with another human being in a long time.

   The seat in front of me stayed empty all the way through the final boarding call. Then a gentleman slid into 1A, and the first thing I noticed was the tattoos on his head and neck. I’ve done prison ministry for years, and I’ve walked enough yards to recognize what those particular tattoos meant. I didn’t look away. I looked closer.

   Then I noticed two more things. He pointed his air vent backward, toward me, which struck me as odd. And he didn’t seem to know how to turn it off. First-time flyer, I thought. It was a chilly spring morning in the Northeast, so I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he’d mind aiming the vent another direction or closing it. He turned around eagerly and said he was cold too — he just wasn’t sure how to work the thing. So I helped him close it.

  That little exchange might be the most important thing I did all week. Not because it solved a vent problem. Because it told him, in the only way that matters with a man like him, I see you, and I’m not afraid of you.

  The plane was small — no room overhead for carry-ons, and since he was in 1A, he didn’t even have a seat-back in front of him to slide a bag under. His “carry-on” was a clear plastic bag, about the size of a lunchbox. Everything he owned in the world was inside it. I recognized that too. 

  The stewardess was kind. She found a place for it and reminded him, gently, to make sure any valuables were still in there when we landed. As we stood up to get off, I couldn’t help myself: “Hey, you better make sure you still got your money. There’s some sketchy people on this flight.” He laughed. She laughed. And the wall came down.

  We were walking off the jet bridge together when I asked where he was connecting to. Out west. I asked what brought him to Pennsylvania. He named the location, and I recognized it instantly — a federal corrections facility. Then I noticed his hands were shaking and his voice trembling, and the Holy Spirit dropped the rest of the sentence into me: He just got out.

“Wait... are you saying you JUST got out??”

“Yes.”

“Like they just printed you a ticket and you got on a plane to go home?”

“Yes.”

“Wow! Congratulations! Welcome back into the world!”

   Ten years. He’d been gone for ten years. And the first stranger he met on the outside got to say welcome back. I don’t take that lightly.

   I had an hour layover in Charlotte, so I asked to see his ticket and offered to help him get to his next gate. Have you ever tried to navigate Charlotte airport when your body still remembers how to walk a chow line? He kept commenting on the crowds — people everywhere, in every direction. In prison, you always know where everyone is. The count tells you, the line tells you, the guard at the post tells you. Out here? Fifty thousand strangers moving in every vector at once, and no one watching anyone.

   I told him what years of prison ministry and a couple of deployments taught me: keep your head on a swivel. The world has gotten more dangerous in ten years, not less. Don’t be afraid — be aware. He nodded and said, “Yeah, even inside, the guys were talking about how bad the crime has gotten out here.” Imagine that. Even the prisoners are talking about how bad the crime is on the outside.

   We had time, so we hunted for a kiosk. I knew he didn’t have money, and I wanted him to have something better than airline pretzels for his first meal as a free man. I asked what he’d like. He looked at me like a kid and said, “I haven’t had a Coke in ten years. I would love a Coke!”

  We walked up to the first kiosk, and I asked the woman behind the counter if she had a Coke. “Only Pepsi,” she said. “Ma’am,” I told her, “this gentleman hasn’t had a Coke in ten years. We need a Coke!” She laughed. He laughed. She pointed us to the next kiosk, and we got him his Coke.

   He also picked out protein bars. No junk food. He told me he’d been working out the whole time he was inside and wanted to stay in shape. Good man, I thought. He had a plan. He had discipline. He wasn’t going to blow ten years of self-mastery on a candy bar.

   He asked me to watch his bags while he used the bathroom, and he was in there for close to ten minutes. When he came out, I asked if everything was okay. He looked at me, half-embarrassed: “I couldn’t figure out how to use the faucets. The guy next to me looked at me like I was an idiot.” Touchless faucets weren’t a thing the way they are now when he went in. He’d been waving his hands at a sink for ten minutes trying to figure out where the handles were. I told him the truth: half the time I can’t get them to work either.

   And then I told him about coming home from the Gulf War, to encourage him. I was only gone ten months — nothing like his ten years — but I still remember pulling up to a gas pump after I got back and not being able to figure out how to pay with a credit card. Things had changed that fast. I told him to give himself some grace, that it would take time, and that the world doesn’t wait for you while you’re away — it just keeps rearranging itself.

   He nodded. I think he needed to hear that someone else had felt it too, even if my version was a postcard compared to his.

   As we walked, I asked him who would be waiting for him at home — who’s his support network? Because here’s the math: you cannot go back in. But if you don’t have the right people around you, the odds favor it. He told me about his home church and his family. He looked me in the eye and promised me they would be there.

   I told him not to let anyone discourage him from finding work — many employers now offer real perks to hire people who’ve done their time, so the world has actually changed in his favor on that front. Don’t let anyone make him feel small about it. Then he said something that almost made me stop walking: “I love reading leadership books.”

   I’d been carrying an autographed copy of The Island of Misfit Leaders in my bag. I handed it to him right there in the concourse — to a man, fresh out of a decade in federal time, carrying everything he owned in a clear plastic bag, walking into a new life. A book about leaders who don’t fit the mold, who’ve been broken and rebuilt, whose stories the polished world doesn’t want to hear. If you want to know what a divine appointment looks like, that was it.

  We made it to his gate. He had a flight to catch, and I had to double back to mine. We stood off to the side of the boarding line, two strangers who’d known each other for ninety minutes, and we prayed together before we said goodbye.

   And as I walked back through the terminal toward my own gate, the thing that struck me was this: God had ordained that the very first interaction this man had on the outside, after ten years inside, would be with me. What an honor. Of all the people moving through that airport that morning, of all the seats on all the planes, the Lord arranged it so a sister in Christ would be sitting one row behind him to say welcome back into the world. I am going to hear more tremendous things from this gentleman. I know it.

   Here’s what I keep coming back to. If I had not heeded that little prompt the night before — if I had stayed in 14A like I always do — none of this would have happened. The Air Force years, the desert deployments, the prison yards, the gas pump, the books I’ve written, the people I’ve sat with, the things I’ve learned the hard way about coming back into the world — all of it stays in the vault.

   Every chapter of my life has been tuition. Every uncomfortable season, every misfit experience, every story I didn’t understand at the time — God was paying for a seat in 2A on a Tuesday morning. And the only thing required of me was to click the button the night before when something nudged me to move. That’s the whole game.

  You don’t have to be a prison minister. You don’t have to have walked through a war. The tuition God has paid into your life — whatever it is — was not wasted. He has someone in mind for it. So, pay attention to the prompts. The little ones. The ones that don’t make sense. The seat change. The phone call. The exit you almost didn’t take. Heed them. Because in the big sea of humanity, someone is looking for someone just like you to float into their stream.

  And when you get there, bring a book. Bring a joke. Bring a Coke.