I write a lot about my children here. I write a lot about grace-about the Word made flesh in my story. But tonight, tonight I just want to write for sheer joy. To sketch a few pictures with my fleeting words. And I want to write a little about me.
Let me tell you where my soul belong{ed}.
The question was posed to the Husband and I….where have you most felt at home. Independent of one another, we both provided the same answer.
In the front seat of a helicopter. {So cheesy, I know}.
And so, on days when I remember who I used to be and the season in which home was roughly twenty thousand pounds strapped onto my back and right where I belonged … I close my eyes and soar.
And gravity drifts away and the earth fades and my stomach settles comfortably in the region of my toes and the view from a thousand feet looks right, and familiar.
I am cutting ties with earth.
I’ve seen the sun rise over the clouds from that seat – liquid gold over a sea of fog, half a world away, and still home.
I’ve danced on the edge of a rain cloud in that seat – chasing rainbows in south Alabama.
I’ve seen Denali at ten thousand feet {without climbing it}, and skirted the Adriatic Sea.
How do I fit six years into five minutes and make you understand how giddy I was every single time the ground slipped from sight.
I cried when I threw away my checklist.
And even now, when home is three babes wound around my legs and I’ve never been happier, there are moments still when I miss the heady aroma of jet fuel and freedom.
{Having issues with computer tonight … so go here for some fun photos … and there’s video on FB}.
~M.
Hi Mrs. H! I just wanted to thank you for your welcome comment on my post 🙂 and let you know that I really appreciated reading your story. Then I realized how much more thankful I was for what you said to me about fear because, I learned, that you have slain that dragon so many times with the strength of our Lord and the Sword of His Spirit.
The Lord is so so good to us.
Thanks again,
Samantha
P.S. Belated congrats on your newest little guy! He is precious!
So sweet. I love this! Thanks for sharing a corner into your world. I can’t imagine — how amazing, though :). Glad you still get to write and share about those adventures. Would love to hear more!
LOVE this … glad I found your blog through FMF 🙂 I plan to come back
Loved this; a good friend relates it to being where we feel ‘most alive’, a thought borrowed from John Eldridge, I think. I ‘feel’ most alive looking at the red rock canyon walls from the shoreline of the Colorado River at my uncle’s ranch, near Gypsum, Colorado. I’ve tried to explain it to my wife, (words are not adequate), but its the area we roamed as kids, taking risks, doing ‘daring’ things with the fearless naivety of children. I think, perhaps, that is why Jesus exhorts us to have the faith of a child–
I am an Air Force veteran (enlisted); the fighter pilots I interacted with were most childlike in exuberance and joy while describing the aerial exploits.
Can I add just one more thought? I used to wrestle with ‘what has happened to me, since those days of youthful exuberance and risk’? I no longer wrestle; I am who I used to be, just living temporarily out of context, if you will. I think Heaven will provide the perfect context to reveal who we truly are.
“And so, on days where I remember who I used to be…”–Molly, that is not who you used to be–it is who you are. That adventurous soul, learning, with us all, to find the adventure we long for in our present context.