Fear of Flying

THE FLAT FIELDS OF HOLLAND

 by me

The flat fields of Holland
suddenly tilt and fall away from us
Take-off, Schipol, Amsterdam
God, we are all now in your hands.

I have never flown in one of the contraptions above - and have no plans to!  I found it in the Captain's photo gallery. Anyway, my flying days are over - unless I am, as I hope to be, in the earthly paradise and we travel on planes there - but I realise I would be much more nervous now if I did fly.  Although there is not a lot of point worrying once you are up there. There is nothing you can do after all.  It stays up, by some miracle (insofar as I can understand it), or it doesn't.

We had one near miss, that I know of, in our Maldives days, when our driver had to emergency stop the plane just as it reached takeoff speed. We were taking off from the tiny Maldives Airport Island, so he had very little leeway. We all thought we were going into the sea and tried to brace ourselves as best we could (the seats were very rattly).  We flew very cheap in those days.  However he managed to halt it just in time, hurtled round and went for take-off again, this time making it. Though we hit a patch of turbulence as soon as we got up and once again we all thought that was it.

The existence of this blog is of course a spoiler alert.  We did indeed stay in the air and make it all the way to the Emirates. However we were stopped there as the pilot had damaged the landing gear when he did the emergency stop and the plane was grounded. We had to wait for another plane to arrive. It was a long night, but we all got there safely, which is the thing.

But Fear of Driving might have been a better title for this blog in that I had to drive my little red car on Thursday for the first time in months - eyes/cataracts/cataract surgery.  Very nervous even though it was only round the corner to the doctor's for yet another blood test - somewhere I could have walked to just a few years ago.

Another spoiler alert - I did make it. Thank God.  But the parking would have been impossible if I hadn't had my blue badge. There was nothing on the road, nothing in the surgery carpark, so I drove round the road to the Disabled Parking outside the library. Which was available.  And while it meant a bit of a hobble, I had my stick with me and made it to the surgery early.

How different things are now from our early retirement years.  But I am very grateful for all of them, and so grateful still to be here - and to be able to see the small yet dramatic sunrise over the Channel this morning. The sky is heavy with cloud, except for the Eastern corner where the rising sun is beginning to announce itself.

Once again I asked Jehovah that one day Col and I might be able to watch the sun rise while thanking Him for all this from a perfect heart.