Take up your cross
“Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”—Matthew 16: 21-28.
This was our headline over 20 years ago.
Wednesday, June 2, 1999.
All of Little Rock mourns the crash last night of American Flight 1420 from Dallas at the Little Rock airport. During a severe thunderstorm shortly before midnight Tuesday, the aircraft skids off the end of runway 4R, crashes into a bank of landing lights and a metal tower, and lands in a flood plain of the Arkansas River 15 feet below the runway. The steel poles act as a can opener, peeling back the plane’s thin shell on its left side. Fire engulfs the plane as fuel spills.
The captain and eight passengers have died so far.
Images of the disabled plane speak to the miracle of the 129 survivors, primarily Arkansans. Conversations in this capitol city center around eyewitness accounts from survivors. One of the first and most haunting reports is by Little Rock native Carla Koen at Children’s Hospital Burn Unit. As she tries to escape from the burning plane through the hole in its side, she is caught on the jagged edges and becomes trapped, hanging by one leg upside down. Other passengers spill out over and on top of her, scrambling to get out. “They poured over me while I was hanging there, but no one stopped to help me,” she cries. “One angry, panicked man even screamed at me as I dangled upside down for me to move and get out of his way so he could get out of the wreckage. I’ll see his face for the rest of my life,” responds this survivor.
When Carla Koen finally frees her leg and jumps to safety, she soon is caring for two young girls alone and terrified in the adjacent hay field in the driving rain and hail, Erin and Cara Ashcraft, 13 and 10, who are on the flight to visit their grandparents in Arkansas. “I tried to talk to them about life and how we were alive, and that was the most important thing,” Koen says, adding that the girls helped her as well. “They gave me something else to focus on.” She doesn’t allow the lack of consideration of others to help her become a “stumbling block,” a resentment that could keep her from reaching out to others.
“Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
The chances of our ever being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. However, our chances are 1 in 10 of being caught in an addictive lifestyle, which often leads to a life that looks like an impending airline disaster, a life controlled by alcohol, work, drugs, a person. There is no doubt that addictions become a cross to bear. Those caught in addiction often feel like Carla Koen, hanging by one leg, upside-down, dangling out of a burning airplane.
There is more to this gospel than about cross-bearing and dying. Unfortunately, the disciples missed the message, and we often do as well. “And on the third day, you will be raised.” He is talking about resurrection. Those in 12-step groups know it as recovery, a new life. Resurrection and recovery are written throughout Flight 1420, especially in Carla Koen’s story.
The message to those in addiction is that when we feel like we are hanging by one leg upside down in a burning disaster, the message of 12-step groups is that we can get out of that burning plane, that old life, and find a completely new life waiting for us. One of the secrets to the new life is that instead of harboring resentment for situations and people in the past, we are called to reach out to serve others in similar situations, just as Carla Koen did. This is also called the Twelfth Step of recovery. This is the significant way healing occurs. This recovery is also called resurrection.
Linda S. Caillouet, “Fleeing survivors trod on entangled woman,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Thursday, June 3, 1999.
Joanna Seibert, “Flight 1420, A community of Survivors and Servants,” The Living Church, July 11, 1999.
Andrea Harter, “Surviving 1420,” A Four part series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 23-26, 2000.
Andrea Harter, “Flight 1420 survivors to gather, crash memorial dedication today”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday, June 1, 2004.
joanna