Sitting beside the open door of a small airplane, 14,000 feet in the air, I closed my eyes, dreading what I was about to do.<\/p>\n
My sixtieth year had seemed the perfect time to finally venture from my chrysalis, the cocoon that had sheltered me the bulk of my life. I had already taken steps towards freedom, riding motorcycles and in a hot-air balloon. Other things, like divorce and cancer, had also chipped away at my shell; but this adventure\u2014skydiving\u2014was the scariest by far.<\/p>\n
I had no idea why I had chosen to do it, though I tried to envision myself as a butterfly, stretching its wings to fly, doing what it was born to do.<\/p>\n
Dan, my skydive instructor, assured me that jumping out of an airplane was safer than driving home in my car. I knew he was right and I was confident he would take care of me.<\/p>\n
But I was so scared, I was about to throw up.<\/p>\n
I thought that through years of grappling with life, I had clawed a large enough opening to emerge and find freedom; but once that plane started down the runway, any hope of enjoyment vanished.<\/p>\n
I started remembering how much I dislike air travel.<\/p>\n
All the more reason to jump out of the airplane, right?<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes and leaned my face against the inner wall of the plane.<\/p>\n
Oh, God.<\/em><\/p>\n Someone touched my shoulder. Sarah, the intuitive friend jumping with me, was reaching out her calming hand. I wondered if my son, Chris, also on the plane to jump, was picking up on my fear as well. But he’s grown now; Mom doesn’t have to be the strong one any more.<\/p>\n Before I knew it, Dan and I were out the open door and falling through the air so fast I couldn’t breathe. I looked briefly at the ground far below and shut my eyes again.<\/p>\n Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.<\/em><\/p>\n Someone grabbed my wrist and my eyes fluttered open to see, dancing in the air in front of me, an ancient Chinese warrior, in a funny helmet with a topknot. No, that can’t<\/em> be right.<\/em> I shut my eyes and opened them again, to realize it was only Nick, another skydiver, with a camera on his head. He was filming my jump and seemed to want me to play hand games with him.<\/p>\n Not going to happen. I kept a death grip on my harness straps, too terrified to spread my wings.<\/p>\n What happened to my lovely image of flying free?<\/p>\n Perhaps the skydive itself was actually my last struggle to claw out an opening from the cocoon rather than my first flight in freedom.<\/p>\n As a child, I feared falling from a great height with nothing to catch me or to cushion my fall. Countless nights, I woke up in a panic, a scream frozen in my throat, grabbing desperately at the sheets to save myself. Thankful that I awoke before hitting the ground.<\/p>\n My friends said that if you hit bottom before waking up, it would kill you.<\/p>\n Which probably explains why the nightmares so terrified me.<\/p>\n I’m only now remembering them, a month after I leapt from that open door. At some point before my teen years, I stopped having the nightmares. I don’t know why they stopped. Maybe I was simply learning to trust God.<\/p>\n So was I inadvertently testing my faith through this thing I was doing?<\/p>\n It may be an exercise in futility, trying to find meaning in a fifteen-minute experience, but I believe God has a purpose for every path I walk. Or fly.<\/p>\n After the rough moments when the parachute opened, I once again closed my eyes and let my mind drift to another place. I think I intentionally tried to direct my thoughts elsewhere in an effort to calm my fears.<\/p>\n I was aware of the sun on my face and of Dan suggesting that I swallow to pop my ears, and later, to move my legs forward when we were ready to land. I was aware that he said we were going to take it slow and easy. (He was a great guy, to pick up on how scared I was!) But mostly, I was envisioning my feet on Sharp Top, my favorite peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hiking. Just hiking. The same calming place that came to mind when I was giving birth to my two children. During childbirth, though, I pictured Sharp Top from a distance. This time, it took the image of my feet steadfastly walking up a trail to give me any relief.<\/p>\n We slid onto the ground on our butts, an easy landing. But I was unable to move after we came to a stop. Wiped out. Completely exhausted from emotional stress.<\/p>\n I’m thankful my patient instructor gave me a few minutes to decompress, when I’m sure he needed to get moving to prepare for his next jump.<\/p>\n My fellow skydivers whooped and laughed, celebrating their accomplishments.<\/p>\n I didn’t.<\/p>\n Maybe someday I’ll be able to give my experience a big thumbs-up.<\/p>\n Just. Not. Yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sitting beside the open door of a small airplane, 14,000 feet in the air, I closed my eyes, dreading what I was about to do. My sixtieth year had seemed the perfect time to finally venture from my chrysalis, the cocoon that had sheltered me the bulk of my life. I had already taken steps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}