Tag: get back up

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Life Lessons From…Skydiving?

Exiting an aircraft with Tony and his very recognizable jumpsuit

I’m certainly no skydiving guru. While I was a skydiving student, though, I had a few memorable jumps. I’m not sure what the requirement is now, but when I was working on getting my A License (the most basic jumping certification), the rule was that you had to accumulate at least 25 jumps and meet certain milestones along the way.

I was in the plane on the way up for my 23rd jump. The weather was turning sour, so this was the drop zone’s last load of jumpers for at least a few hours. We saw the cloud bank rolling in, and we were trying to rush up to altitude so we could jump out and land before the clouds obscured our view of the ground.

Another student named Jeremy and I were going to jump with our coach Tony. Tony was pretty familiar with us and we had all jumped together before. He wore a neon orange jumpsuit that was so bright it looked like it ran on batteries.

On a jump with Tony as my coach

I don’t remember what the freefall objectives of the jump were, but once we arrived at altitude we hopped out together and began going through our freefall plan. We fell through our predetermined “time to separate” altitude, so we broke apart to get some distance between us before we opened our parachutes. All three of us opened the chutes without a problem, but much to our surprise, the cloud cover had blown in much faster than we anticipated. We couldn’t see the ground anywhere. The only thing we had were our altimeters; we knew how high we were off the ground, but we didn’t know where we were in relation to the airport, so we couldn’t line up in our landing pattern. Since the wind was pushing us the whole time, the longer we floated aimlessly, the further off course we drifted, leaving us less margin of error for a safe landing at the airport.

Since Jeremy and I were still students, each of us had a one-way radio in our jumpsuit shoulder pockets. There was a guy on the ground with a walkie talkie that was waiting to spot us, and he would radio instructions about which way to turn and when to do it. Until we popped through the clouds though, it was useless for all of us.

Tony took the lead; he was the lowest jumper “under canopy,” so I followed him, and Jeremy followed me. I was glad Tony’s jumpsuit was so bright. It was eerie and unsettling to drift without direction in a thick fog. The last time we saw the airport, we were right over it, but the wind can be a lot stronger than you realize when you don’t have any visible references.

Suddenly we popped through the bottom of the clouds at a low altitude. The airport was impossibly far away! We had bled off so much altitude in the fog that there was no way we could make it back. Tony’s canopy had a much higher performance capability, so he made a break for the airport and was able to make it back. With our “vanilla” student rigs and oversized canopies, though, Jeremy and I had no chance of reaching the airport.

The dropzone where I learned to jump was home to the Guinness World Record holder of sport parachute jumps. Don Kellner, who just recently completed his 45,000th jump, was on the radio giving instructions to Jeremy and I. Don’s a funny guy; he doesn’t pull any punches, so he says it like it is and doesn’t sugar coat it.

“Well…find a place to land” came through the radio. Thanks Don.

We had blown way off course. We were now downwind not just of the runway, but of the entire airport complex, and we had a choice: land somewhere in a neighborhood, land somewhere in a wooded area, or land in a big rock quarry. Don advised us to shoot for the quarry.

When you’re a novice jumper, you usually have a flat patch of grass that’s as big as a football field to land on, and there’s usually plenty of other open space nearby (runways and the grassy areas next to them are usually pretty long). All of a sudden, a hilly rock quarry that didn’t have any wind indicators seemed like a pretty hostile place to land. It was the best of our bad options though, so we went for it.

With Tony out of the picture, I was now the lead in the flight pattern. I made a series of turns to get us lined up for what looked like the longest stretch of the flattest ground at the bottom of the quarry. We floated below the horizon and became committed to our flight path.

We both stumbled and took a few bumps and bruises as we tried running out our landings on the side of a hill. We made it safely to the ground without any blood or major injuries. After the canopies fell to the ground, we excitedly checked in with each other and exaggerated to each other just how truly awesome we were with lots of laughs, wild gestures to help relive the experience, and congratulatory slaps on the back. As we took a deep breath and looked around the bottom of this hole, we realized that we didn’t even know which way we should start climbing up out of the quarry. With all the midair turns we did, we lost all sense of direction and couldn’t even point to the airport or the nearest road.

Something tells me that we weren’t the first wayward skydivers to land in this quarry. Before we could even decide what to do, two of our other instructors, in their goofy neon jumpsuits, appeared on the rim of the quarry, shouting and waving to us. We were rescued!

Some general perspective on living: Life isn’t always going to go the way you planned. There are going to be times you find yourself traveling through a disorienting fog. Sometimes you’ll feel abandoned by the people you depended on (or you simply can’t keep up with them). In those times, when you’re at the bottom of a hole, someone might just show up to help you. They may not be what you expected, but it’s still an opportunity to find out which way to climb out of the hole.

We’re passing through strange times; it might not be a bad idea to accept a hand up when it’s offered. Keep your chin up; brighter days are coming.

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Brainstorm!

I don’t know if you or I are going to make it through this COVID-19 thing. I bet that we will, though.

How do Christians band together in a time of social distancing and self-quarantines? It’s an interesting question, and it’s going to take some innovative thinking. This is where the world needs your help.

Ordinarily the term “disruptive” has a negative connotation. “He’s disruptive in class,” etc. That’s not the only meaning of the word, thankfully. “Disruption” can also mean an upsetting of established norms in such a way that it forces a new norm. It’s what happened when motorized vehicles replaced horses. Digital cameras replaced film cameras. Cell phones took over for landlines. Amazon.com came on the scene and drove a lot of brick and mortar stores out of business. The people behind these seismic shifts are known as “disruptors.”

Coronavirus has certainly upended large portions of our lives and caused us to have to readjust in major ways. Schools and colleges are all of a sudden shutting their doors for the rest of the year. Churches are canceling in-person services. Bible studies and prayer meetings can no longer meet in the traditional sense.

People don’t usually like change. Well, this time around, a virus is forcing change on us all. Things are changing so fast that we don’t yet have established “norms” in the wake of this pandemic. For a lot of folks a major burden of our new reality is the loneliness and lack of in-person human contact.

We were created to be social beings. It’s simply how God made us. Some people need social interaction a lot more than others, but we all need it to some degree. When we’re suddenly unable to socialize in the ways to which we’re accustomed, it’s a major shock for a lot of folks. As Christians, we’re often reminded in scripture to meet together regularly, to “do life” together, and build one another up.

How do we do that when we can’t meet in person? I’ve watched church on my computer for the past two Sundays. I heard recently about a church that held a service at a drive-in movie theater. I think that’s a fantastic idea, but those facilities are not as common as they once were.

This is where you come in. I’m challenging you to think like a disruptor. Because this is an actual problem the world currently faces, I’d really like to encourage you to provide comments here. Here’s your challenge:

How can people still meet together to build one another up without physically being closer than six feet?

Technology is a mixed bag. Now we can have meetings without even being near the other attendees. You have Zoom, Facetime, and Skype, and those are incredibly valuable tools in some respects. Connecting two users isn’t difficult, but it gets a little more complicated if you want to have a dozen people in the same meeting. Also, when you’re stuck in your home, it’s a poor substitute if you’re facing anxiety or depression (to be sure, it’s better than nothing!). What other ways can we leverage technology to decrease isolation? Please post your thoughts!

The phone also works. I’m talking about actual voice calls. Everyone has phones, but nobody calls anymore. For some people, chatting on the phone versus sending an email or text goes a long way.

Then you have in-person meetings. These days I yell to my neighbors from across the street. It doesn’t quite have to be that far, but if you want to honor the authorities’ guidelines of having meetings no larger than 10 people, no closer than six feet together, is there a way to make that happen feasibly? This might be a ridiculous mental image, but it’s a thought-prompt; is there a way to have a dozen people sit close together by building little plexiglass “cells” (imagine a scene from a TV show or movie where someone is visiting someone else in prison)? What if a dozen cars came together in a circle in an otherwise empty church parking lot and everyone on the driver’s side of the car rolled down their windows to have a discussion? (That circle is probably a little too big and everyone would need hearing aids and megaphones, but can we make the idea work somehow?)

I don’t know what the answer is, I’m just trying to get the creative juices going. Right now Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) need ways of meeting together and helping each other up after they fall or get knocked down. A lot has happened, and a lot of change has been forced on us. How can we implement change on our own to make this situation a little more bearable, especially for the people that need to be around other people?

“How does my idea help?” Well, you’re reading this, aren’t you? I don’t normally have a huge readership, but you’re not the only one that reads this. Your idea, even if it’s incomplete, can spark an idea for someone else. Let’s say you have no ideas. That’s okay, you can still help crack the code on this problem. Will you pass this entry on, either by forwarding it to someone or sharing it on your social media?

You are a string, but we are a rope. We WILL get through this…maybe in part by using your ideas.

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Be Where You’re Supposed To Be

There’s an old problem-solving technique called “The Five Whys.” It’s simple in its execution. You start with a problem:

We can’t go on the vacation we’ve been planning.

Ask: Why? (Number 1)

We had to spend a big chunk of that money on a car repair.

Ask: Why? (Number 2)

The car broke down unexpectedly.

Ask: Why? (Number 3)

(Sheepishly) Because I haven’t been maintaining it.

The idea is that by the time you’ve asked “Why?” five times, you’ve arrived at the root cause of the problem you’re facing.

King David is one of the most famous characters in the Bible. He had incredible highs and also some very low lows. In the end, this “man after God’s own heart” was an imperfect human, but he always sought God’s mercy and forgiveness.

His most famous shortcoming occurred with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. Here’s a quick refresher from 2 Samuel chapter 11:

11 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.

Bathsheba, of course, became pregnant. David made matters worse by trying to cover it up, and when that didn’t work, he had Bathsheba’s husband intentionally killed in battle. It took a prophet to confront him in order to make him admit his wrongdoing. While there’s much we can learn from David, we’ll focus on this tragic tale and try to apply a lesson to our own lives. Let’s use the “Five Whys” with David’s situation:

David got taken to task by Nathan the prophet for murdering an innocent man.

Why? (Number 1)

David ordered the death of Uriah, one of his faithful warriors.

Why? (Number 2)

He had an affair with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.

Why? (Number 3)

David saw her bathing on the rooftop and decided that he had to have her.

Why? (Number 4)

He wasn’t where he was supposed to be, fighting with his army at Rabbah.

And here we have the root cause. The text doesn’t say why David remained behind in Jerusalem; it just says that he did. By not being with his army, as was the custom of the day’s kings, it opened the door to temptation, which resulted in adultery, lies, and murder.

While you may not be in charge of an army, there’s probably been at least one time in your life when something bad happened because you were somewhere you didn’t belong.

The lesson here? Be where you’re supposed to be.

If you’re a Christ-follower, God has equipped and tasked you to perform certain functions or roles here on Earth. Once you know what He wants you to do, you can either run from it (think Jonah) or you can work toward it (think Paul). The road is never guaranteed to be easy, but there’s peace of mind when you work toward it. Running from it causes restlessness, unrest, and numerous complications.

The simplest way to avoid all of that? Be where you’re supposed to be.

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You’ve Made Your Bed, Now Sleep in it

Your decisions have consequences, but don’t let those consequences put limits on you.        

In college I majored in Biology, but I went the first three semesters without identifying what I wanted to focus my studies on.

You can get through your college experience that way, but I wouldn’t advise it. The best part about this route was the blissful ignorance of those first three semesters. I attended a Christian liberal arts college, where as a part of the degree requirements, each student had to complete courses from a wide array of educational topics to round out his or her knowledge base. In those early semesters in college I took courses in anything from Biblical Literature to Psychology to Math to Spanish to Ethics to Macroeconomics to Tennis.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize it, but after awhile I figured out that I was running out of these “Gen Eds” to take. I needed to figure out how to fill the remaining five semesters. In an epiphany, I began to understand that I needed to figure out what I wanted to declare for my major. I ended up selecting Biology with an Environmental Emphasis.

As you can imagine, if you want to major in a science, it means you’ll need to take lots of science courses. That’s not a bad thing as long as you start on them right away, but if you wait to get started on them, like I did, it means you’re living, eating, and breathing science classes later on.

After my realization I worked with my faculty adviser to figure out how to make it work. I was a Bio major, but didn’t get signed up for the most basic of biology classes until halfway through my second year. Then I signed up for a four-week summer Bio course with class all morning and lab work all afternoon, Monday through Friday. (My brain nearly melted during that class. I was an average student that just finished my Sophomore year, and most of the other students in the course were Freshmen honors students that had spent a semester abroad and now just needed to catch up.)

Junior year was also packed with science classes, but I still managed to “kick the can down the road” with one of the key requirements for a Biology major: two semesters’ worth of Chemistry. By the time I began Senior year and started getting into Chemistry, I realized that I was in over my head. I couldn’t stand Chemistry. The professors were great, but I had a terrible time grasping a lot of the material. I had waited until my last two semesters to take two semesters of Chemistry. There would be no withdrawing from the class to arrange a more convenient courseload.

It was already a busy year…I had a Senior Seminar to deliver, I was the Vice President of the Paddle Sports club, I had a few work/study jobs, a buddy and I were getting ready to drive out to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I had a weekly workout routine at the gym, and there was general fun to be had (after all, it was Senior year!).

Even with all I had going on, my whole senior year began to revolve around how I could pass Chemistry. I skipped out on some pranks or outings that would have been fun to be a part of. There was a study group that I started attending each time it met. I linked up with one of the Chemistry Majors, who never seemed to sleep, for help on my homework when I was frustrated and at the end of my rope. With plenty of patience he walked me through each problem. Joel, if you’re out there, thanks for all your help! You saved my bacon!

After all of the craziness and mental anguish, I finally passed both semesters of Chemistry. Never was I so happy to complete two classes.

I whine about it, but this was a crisis of my own making. Because of the choices I made, I backed myself into a corner and made my path to success much more difficult. Here’s the tie-in: even when you become a Christian, your problems don’t go away. God loves you and forgives you if you’re truly sorry, but you must still live with the consequences of your past actions.

Becoming a Christian does not remove all the pain and agony you face. In some ways it makes things more difficult. The good news is that a relationship with Christ gives you hope and strength to face each day, even when each day has repercussions of your previous actions.

As one of God’s chosen, He provides what you need to overcome each obstacle. You may have made your circumstances more complex, but He’s the one that is able to supply for all of your needs. Christianity is not an escape from your problems; it is an opportunity to have hope when facing them. Consider that as you work toward becoming the person He wants you to be.

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Sometimes You Can’t Roll Your Sleeves Up Far Enough

In the Air Force I spent about four or five weeks preparing to pass a screening course for survival instructor candidates. As the time drew near for us to move from preparation to test time, the tone of training got more serious. Up until now we had been building our bodies and learning skills, but there was plenty of goofing off, too. The culmination of our time at Indoc was a nine-day course that was split between rigorous assignments on base and in the barracks for the first half, followed by a period of being out in the field for the second half.

On the last Friday before the course began, it was tradition for instructors to run students through “The Swamp.” The Swamp was a nasty section of Lackland Air Force Base that was just what it sounds like. Making it through the event was not a prerequisite for the course, but it was a way for students to begin making the transition from head knowledge to experience. (It was also fun for the instructors to do.)

A large portion of Air Force Basic Training was focused on professional appearance, making the uniform look good, and establishing a proper demeanor for recruits now living in one of the armed services. While that’s important and has its time and place, preparing to be a survival instructor carried with it a totally different set of objectives. The goal in a survival situation is to do just about whatever it takes to survive and return to friendly territory. A survival instructor goes through grueling circumstances so they better understand how to convey that crucial information to the students they’ll later teach. The Swamp helped students further overcome their reluctance to take actions they might not otherwise take.

Our outing started with some laps up and down a steep hill while wearing heavy rucksacks. We then made our way to the edge of the water. As we got near, we could smell the nasty, stinky, stagnant swamp. It was muddy, had some gross stuff floating in it, and we could only imagine what lived there.

We made our way to where the instructor indicated, then set down our rucks. We weren’t dirty enough yet, so he had us start low crawling through some of the muddiest channels. Naturally, you try to keep your head out of the mud when doing something like that, but that’s exactly what our instructor wanted to break us out of doing. “C’mon, get some mud on your face!”

All of us got herded into an area on the bank of the water, where we started taking turns leading exercises in soaked, muddy uniforms and heavy, waterlogged boots. Pushups, crunches, flutter kicks, eight-count bodybuilders, all sorts of calisthenics made more difficult or tricky by our environment. During flutter kicks, while our soaked boots were up in the air, water would run out of our boots and down our legs. On another occasion I remember that the ground was so soft, while I was in the pushup position my hands sunk down past my elbows into the mud. I couldn’t even bend my elbows to do pushups anymore! We alternately laid on our backs, then on our stomachs, all of us covered in mud except for our necks and heads.

Finally the instructor flat out told us to get every inch of ourselves covered in mud. Then, for his idea of a fun photo-op (which I think is fun too, in retrospect), he had us find some kind of plant to put somewhere on ourselves. By this time, you could hardly even distinguish between the students.

It’s tough to see, but yours truly is the fifth from the left

After awhile, our instructor called an end to the experience. We all headed back toward the bus. Since we couldn’t just walk onto the bus in our current condition, though, we had to get all the mud off. The stinky, dirty, nasty water that once seemed to stink so badly now washed us clean. We walked waist-deep into the water, bent down so the water was up to our neck, and in some cases even went all the way under. Considering how clean we looked when we came up, you wouldn’t know the water was so disgusting and swampy. It later took a few trips through the washing machine for those uniforms to become free of the swamp stink, but they eventually recovered.

This was a crazy experience. It was challenging, certainly, but it was very valuable. All the physical training we’d suffered through for weeks, or even months in some cases, and now this situation, demonstrated something very interesting to all of us: if we try pushing ourselves to the limit, we’ll arrive at our self-imposed mental blocks much sooner than we reach our actual limits. Maybe it’s been awhile since someone asked you: “Are you giving it everything you’ve got?” Maybe nobody’s ever asked you the follow-on question: “Yeah, but, are you really giving it your all?”

It’s also valuable to understand that when you’re confronted by difficult (or even miserable) circumstances, it’s a lot more tolerable when you have others there with you. If you’re headed toward something tough, link up with a few others so you can encourage each other along the way. Alternatively, keep your eyes peeled for someone who’s alone in the mud right now. It could be more encouraging than you’ll ever know for them to see someone wading into the mess to come alongside them.

(To see other posts related to the survival instructor indoctrination course, click here.)

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You Don’t Wear the Black Armband Forever

A view of Earth rising above the lunar surface during Apollo 8

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. I loved learning about the space race of the 1960s and 70s, and at one point I knew the name and assigned crew position of every Apollo astronaut that flew on a mission during the Apollo Program.

In 1961 the Americans had barely touched space. America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, didn’t even complete an orbit; the weak rocket he used only got him high enough to kiss the edge of space. The Soviets had already sent their first Cosmonaut into orbit, and this launch was a weak American response, barely doing enough to keep us in the race. Less than three weeks later, American President Kennedy threw down the audacious goal of beating the Soviets in a manned mission to the moon before the end of the decade, as a way of establishing American preeminence in space.

Thus began a harrowing eight or nine years for NASA. It had to not only figure out the best strategy for meeting the goal, but it also had to develop skills and equipment that didn’t exist.

The process moved fast and grew increasingly complex with time. First NASA sent up one astronaut at a time, and the longest that any mission stayed up was just over a day. Then it started launching two astronauts at a time. They started to do spacewalks, to rendezvous with other orbiting objects, and to see if a capsule and crew could physically last for the two weeks in space that it would take to make it to the moon and back. Finally, it was time for the Apollo missions, which carried three men and the ability to use a lunar lander that would be used to land on the moon.

By all measures, Apollo was a beast of a program. The spacecraft systems’ subsystems had subsystems. Engineers working on the spacecraft worked in round-the-clock shifts, and projects still fell behind schedule. Everyone worked at a breakneck speed to get things ready to meet the deadline. In January 1967, the first Apollo mission finally drew near. Three astronauts sat atop their huge rocket and conducted a final test to demonstrate that all systems were ready to operate on their own.

Then an unmitigated disaster struck, freezing everything in its tracks. As the rocket still sat on the launch pad, a ferocious fire erupted inside the cabin, and killed the three astronauts before they could escape from the capsule. The fire killed America’s second man in space, its first spacewalker, and a rookie astronaut. The devastating setback stunned the nation. All work stopped while NASA, the spacecraft contractors, and even Congress sought answers to what went wrong and whether the moon was worth the cost.

Fellow astronauts escort Grissom’s body to Arlington Cemetery

It wouldn’t be until October 1968, more than a year and a half, before another manned American launch occurred…an eternity when considering JFK’s looming end-of-the-decade deadline. With time running out, everyone needed to figure out how to grieve but still move forward. In the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon,” Wally Schirra, the commander of the first space mission after the fire, was asked about preparing for his upcoming launch while living in the shadow of the Apollo 1 tragedy. He responded “You’re sad. You mourn the loss.” He paused for a moment before adding “But you don’t wear the black armband forever.”

Without question, there are tragedies in peoples’ lives that knock them down hard. The death of a loved one; a betrayal by someone you trust; a feared diagnosis; a job loss; a terrible injury; an addiction you’re fighting through. There are serious and legitimate times in our lives when we just can’t be an effective contributor to God’s kingdom. Nobody faults you for things that are beyond your control. It takes time to fight through many of these problems, and many times God will make something good out of them. Just make sure that you don’t start using your sorrows and difficulties as an excuse not to move forward with what God’s calling you to do.

You’re the only one that knows whether or not this is an issue you’re dealing with. You WILL be knocked down; Jesus promised that we’d have trouble in this world. Sometimes you need to stay down for a minute, but don’t forget that you do need to get back up again.

Don’t wear the black armband forever. There are people you might not even know about that are waiting for you to get back up again.