Day 274 of The Red Shoe Project has arrived. I am in my Ruby Reds and waiting patiently upon the Lord. Last night my dear friend wished me well as she dropped me at my door. Her final words were... "This is between You and the Lord, Gail! I'm staying out of the way!" As much as I hated to hear those words, she's right. It's between Me and God now. There was a little part of me that didn't want to get out of the car. I wanted to stay right there where I was comfortable, safe, and with friends. But if I did that, well... I'd never know...
I'd never know for sure
if all this was legit.
My friend sticking around would just delay the inevitable. I had to go on from here alone. It's time to...
JUMP!
but Joe wasn't interested in any of them. Then, I threw it out there...
"What about skydiving?" He jumped on that one like there was no tomorrow. He didn't think I'd go through with it, but I was motivated.
"For You, Son... I'll do it!"
We agreed to wait a couple months until school was officially out. That was great because it took me that long to totally psych myself up for it. I wouldn't allow myself to be nervous or to think negatively at all. I was going to do it, no matter what!
Early that morning, we sat at a picnic table with a pen and release forms in hand. It was ridiculous. To sum it all up, it basically said... "Even if everything goes totally wrong, and we're the cause of it, you won't hold us liable." LOL! I remember looking at my son, and saying, "Let's say a little prayer." We agreed together and I said a prayer that went something like this: "Lord... We know that this is totally crazy, but we ask you to have your hand on us anyway. Divinely protect us, we pray, and help us to have a good time!" It really was crazy, but we put our lives in God's hands and signed the release.
With minimal training, I tried to take it all in. To be honest, I just wanted to stay focused and positive long enough to make sure I jumped. I'll never forget the plane ride. All of a sudden everyone got pretty quiet. There was a nervousness in the air. I wanted to yell out "Yahoo!!!!! Let's do this!" but it didn't seem quite appropriate. That's okay... I did it in my own mind.
You know... you can drive miles and miles to show up to jump; you can sign a release form and turn it in; you can put on a jump suit and listen to the instruction; you can even go up in the plane... But you're not skydiving until you jump.
120 mph free fall. WOW! If I hadn't watched the video afterwards and seen my son jump out and go straight down, I wouldn't have believed it! Because it doesn't seem that way when you're doing it. There's not a sense of "falling."
I think I might have been the last one to go. It was my turn -- I was up.
One... Two... Three...
I did it!
I had all intentions of going back and skydiving again soon, but the weather wasn't conducive and then my dad died, and then it was something else. It's been a few years since that all took place. But now... here I am, reminiscing about skydiving. Who would ever think that "Living by Faith" and "Following the call of God on my life" would be so much like skydiving?
When all that went down, I was in a challenging place in life. I so desperately felt like I had to "get out of the box" with God. I remember floating down from the clouds and thinking... "Life looks so much different from your perspective, God. Way up here, my problems seem oh so small!"
All worked out just fine then, and all will work out just fine now!
"Yahoo! Let's do this!"
In RED shoes,
Gail
