My Flying Story Part 1: A Dream Awakened

I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly an airplane…and this year that dream has become a reality!

Last Saturday was my first solo ‘cross country’!!!  I talked on the radios and landed at a towered airport…by myself! 😀

But let me start at the beginning…

 

First solo cross country – September 6, 2015

 

I’ve been wanting to share this story for a while, but I wasn’t sure how to start.   I finally decided the best way to start was…well…to start!

My first experience with flying was before I was born 🙂  Daddy got his license the year Mommy was expecting me, and he took her up a few times before I was born, so I guess you could say that my first flight was in utero!  

Daddy, myself, and Leah

June 1994

By the time I was old enough to remember anything, Daddy was no longer current (he had us cute little girls to take care of, haha!),  but first time I remember flying I was about seven years old when Daddy took Leah and I up with his friend as the pilot (since Daddy’s license wasn’t current). I remember that we flew over the water of Michigan Lake with the sun shining on it. I remember flying over our house and waving at Mommy, Susannah, and Cassia. And I remember that the earmuffs/headphones were tight on my head and gave me a headache, but I still liked the flight. I also remember that Leah fell asleep 🙂  Leah now says, “WHY did I fall asleep and waste a good airplane ride?!”

 

As I got older, I always liked airplanes, and I used to joke that I didn’t want a driving license, I wanted a pilot’s license!!!  But alas…you can’t run errands or go to the grocery store in an airplane, so I got my driving license first 🙂

 

Off and on through the years, I’d feel that little tug in my heart whenever I got around airplanes or heard or read about flying. There’s just something in an airplane…the wings, the tail…it’s so beautiful!
I so wanted to do it, but I would just not think about it too often because, I thought, it wasn’t practical. If I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t tug at me as often. What would I do with flying anyway besides just fly for fun? And there was no way in a million years (it seemed) that I could save enough money to do it. And why pour the time and money into it when, again, I didn’t have a ‘good reason’ to?

 

Then Jesus took me through a time of resting and being still with Him. I struggled for a few years, wondering if I was supposed to be ‘doing more’. I loved my life and it was very comfortable, but I’d wonder often if I wasn’t supposed to be ‘out there doing something’. Whatever ‘out there doing something’ was! Especially as Cassia and Susannah started pursuing their callings in EMS and midwifery.  I often asked God, “What is my calling? Shouldn’t I be doing something?” And every time I asked Him, He always gently and clearly told me, “You are right where I want you to be, doing exactly what I want you to do.” He taught me to be still with Him, and showed me so much more of how much He loves me. SO MUCH of what I read and heard during that time was, “I love you so much! Rest on Me, and be still. I’m taking care of you.”

 

When we saw the caption, we thought, ‘No YOU guys are the legendary ones! You fly airplanes!’

 

All of us like airplanes in this family, so when Disney came out with the movie Planes, ALL of us ‘kids’ went to see it 😀  On the way in to the theater, the Warsaw Flying Club had their trainer plane out there with info on Discovery Flights.  We had liked their Facebook page, so when we walked up, Jon Fussle said, “Your’re the Seven Sisters!” and we thought, “How did you know who we are?!”  Lol!   We got our picture taken by the plane, and he posted it on Facebook. 🙂     We ended up buying Discovery Flights when they had a special in December, and then we spread out all of our flights over the next year (2014). It was SO much fun! And I ended up going up in the plane three times, once up front, twice riding along with siblings.

 

June 12, 2014 – my first ‘discovery flight’

 

Cherokee Cove

 

In November of 2013, Mommy was getting ready to go do a T-Tapp retreat in Tennessee. I was feeling especially stressed during that time because I wanted to go (I love traveling with her to her clinics!), but I had lots to catch up on at home, and wasn’t sure if I should spend a long weekend relaxing when I could be working and catching up on some things at home. I debated and debated. Finally, I decided to go, and Leah did, too. I was glad I was going, but I still had a nagging feeling all the way to Tennessee that maybe I should be home, working on stuff.

 

Cherokee Cove in September (when we went back in 2014)

 

Then we started coming into the mountains! We saw this ‘logging trail’ on the side of one and commented that it looked a bit daunting. “Can you imagine driving up that?!” We drove through the pretty valley for a while until the road went straight to that ‘logging trail’. It wasn’t any wider than our driveway in some places, it turned into gravel part of the way up, had hairpin turns, and there was NO guard rail! At that point I started really getting excited…this was exhilarating!

 

 

As soon as we arrived at the Christian retreat center, I was amazed by the peace that I felt in that place! And everywhere I looked I saw the verse, “Be still and know that I am God!” (it happens to be this retreat’s ‘theme verse’). And when we went into the ‘bunk room’ where we were going to sleep, verses of God’s love for us were painted over the beds. And several of them were ones that God had given to me as ‘my’ verses! I loved this place already! I met a lady there named Lisa, who had come for the retreat, and she commented on the verses, too, and I remember she said that she picked her bed underneath her favorite verse 😀

 

One of the verses painted over the beds

Everyone in the South is so warm and friendly, even if they’ve never seen you before in their life, and on top of that was their Christian love…it shone out everywhere and made me feel so safe and warm and loved 🙂  I was SO glad I had come along! Stewart and Samantha are the couple who own and run the retreat center, and Stewart, we discovered was a super good cook! No…a gourmet chef! Every meal we had, he would come out and describe the menu to us, just like you see the chefs on cooking shows describe the food they’ve prepared, and we found out that the blueberries were picked off of the mountain, the potatoes were grown in their garden, and the beef came from a nearby farm. SUCH. GOOD. FOOD!
The whole place oozed peace and goodness 🙂

Yummy food at Cherokee Cove

 

One of the evenings that we were there, I got to talk to Lisa some more, and I asked her what she did for a job. When she told me that she was a pilot for Delta airlines I was like, “WHAT?! Tell me more!!!!” I didn’t say exactly that, but I’m sure my face did! I asked her a few more questions, I think, and told her how I’ve always like airplanes and wanted to fly, but it just wasn’t practical because I didn’t have a specific goal to use it for. She then told me about an organization called Women in Aviation that awarded scholarships every year. That interested me!

I remember she said something about she could send me some of her magazines, but I didn’t want to be greedy and be like, “Yes please do! Here’s my address!” So since she didn’t have my address, I didn’t expect her to actually send them to me. Besides, I was guessing they didn’t have scholarships for people to learn how to fly just for fun! They probably wanted you to use it toward a career.

 

I went home refreshed and so blessed…and there was a teeny tiny awakening of that dream to fly.  I just didn’t quite realize it yet 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

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