“You go ahead and take the controls,” my friend Greg said. He had just given me a very quick mini-course on flying the plane.
With steely determination and a Chuck-Yeager-like cool resolve, I took the wheel. (Okay, I realize it’s not a “steering wheel”. I took whatever it’s called that would be the equivalent of a steering wheel if we were in a car.)
And there you have it. I was flying the plane! …Sort of.
Technically, Greg was still in the pilot seat. His hands were not on the controls for the moment but, if need be, they could be on the controls in less than 2 seconds.
However, with certain qualifications acknowledged, I was flying the plane!
As the temporary pilot, I knew that my mind needed to run through a checklist to assess our current situation. Checklist item one: We were flying at an altitude of approximately 200 feet.
Oh, wait a minute. That can’t be right, can it? We had to be higher than 200 feet off the ground. I began my mental checklist, once again…
Item one: We were flying at an altitude of approximately 30,000 feet.
Hold on. You know what? That can’t be right either, huh? We couldn’t be at 30,000 feet in this type of plane without a pressurized cabin.
Okay, this was a situation in which the temporary pilot, frankly, didn’t really know what our altitude was. But, looking around I could see that we were definitely high up in the air. And with that, I felt confident that I could conclude my assessment of our current situation.
One of the main objectives of my temporary time as pilot of the craft was simply to keep the plane level and maintain our current altitude. (Whatever that was.) But something kept happening.
Whenever I would make normal adjustments to correct the flight of the craft, I had a tendency to overcompensate. So, for example, if we were gradually beginning to lose altitude, the adjustment would involve pulling back on the… you know, the thingamabob… the thing that would be a steering wheel if we were in a car. But my tendency would be to pull back a little too far so that now instead of leveling off again at the right altitude, we would begin climbing too steeply.
Realizing that I had pulled back too far, I would then push in gently and gradually but, sure enough, my adjustment would be a little too much and we would begin zooming toward the ground. In fact, one time during my over-adjustment I could tell that we were heading toward the ground much too rapidly. As you can imagine, it was comforting for me, in that moment, to know that Greg was still in the plane. And, sure enough, when I looked in his direction, I was relieved to see him sobbing and repeating the Lord’s Prayer.
Alright, I’m probably making that nosedive sound worse than it actually was. However, I will say this, when it happened, there was a woman out in her back yard hanging up some laundry and before it was over, we had a pair of her husband’s boxer shorts on our propeller.
After we got the plane leveled off and flying right, once again, Greg said, “Hey, I want to show you something. Watch this. Take your hands off the controls.”
I looked at him. “Really?”
He said, “Yeah, just for a moment. Take your hands off the controls.”
I did.
And for a few moments the plane flew properly, with no one’s hands on the controls.
Greg looked at me and smiled.
The sad but inescapable fact was that the plane flew better with no one in control than it did with me flying it.
Yes, I’ll be honest with you, that’s a little bit embarrassing.
I suspect it’s possible that this story could help illustrate some terrific idea. Something like, “Let go and let God.” Or, “God’s ultimately in control.” Or, “God is my co-pilot.”
But, to me, the real moral of the story is: Bring in the laundry if you hear that I’m flying a plane in your area.
*NOTE: This is, basically, a true story, however some of the details have been mildly exaggerated in order to achieve maximum embarrassment.
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