August 11, 2006

Sunset | March 29, 2006

Despite having a pilot father and taking my first trip in a single-engine plane at the age of 7 weeks, I've become a pretty poor flier the last few years. I'm nervous on take-off and sweaty-palmed at every dip in pressure or tumble of turbulence.

But lately I'm trying to let go of my fear (though I can't stop my heart from racing as we taxi down the runway or lift into the sky) and learning to do as I say. If I say that I trust God's will for my life, why am I afraid as I ascend into His sky? If I'm certain in my eternity, what does it matter if I never touch the ground again? Of course all those questions are easy to answer when I'm laying in bed at night, asking them rhetorically. That attitude is harder to stick to when you are soaring 30,000 feet about the Earth, hurtling hundreds of miles an hour through open skies.

So lately I've been taking advantage of those times when I'm nearer to my God. It's easy to forget His grandness when you're stuck in an office cubicle. It's much harder to doubt his creations when you are sailing through a sea of clouds, surrounded by a ocean of sky; when the sun spreads its fingers through the atmosphere, touching everything below it; when it reaches across, instead of down, to warm your skin.

I switched my preferred seating from aisle to window and I spend most of the flight peering out in amazement and taking pictures of cloud formations and the light as it bounces around the sky.

When I was a little girl and my dad would take us up, I always had an urge to jump out of the plane onto the white, fluffy clouds. In my imagination they would support me and I would be able to bounce from one to another, aloft in the atmosphere. With my dad at the controls, I had no fear. I would follow the plane's shadow as we took off; watching it get smaller and smaller as we rose higher and higher. Sometimes I would wave to our shadows, bidding them adieu till we met on the ground again.

And so I'm learning that with my Father as my pilot, I shall have no fear.

Posted by hannah at 01:34 PM