Say when it’s time to save your own life

I jumped out of the plane, and my jump master followed close behind. This was going to be a fun jump. We were going to play Simon Says in the air.

He did a 360-degree turn to the right. I turned, too. He turned to the left, and I did the same. Then he did a back loop. Okay, I thought. Here I go. I jerked my knees up, but instead of back looping, I rolled onto my side and went into a spin. With each spin, I whirled faster and faster.

I tried to arch, the body position that would get me falling belly down and stable, and make it safe to pull my parachute, but my body movements weren’t working the way they were supposed to work. Maybe if I push my right arm out further, or maybe it’s my left leg, I thought.

My jump master watched me whirling like a fan blade. He tried to catch me each time I whirled around, but he couldn’t get ahold. I kept focusing on trying to stop my spin. Finally, he yanked my hand, pointing to my altimeter.

My God, I was getting low. In less than thirty seconds, I’d hit the ground and my life would be done. I’d be dead.

The moral of this story is simple. I learned it when I joined my jump master back on the ground. “What are you going to do,” he asked, “spend the rest of your life trying to gain control?”

Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in a situation. We get so focused on the details of figuring out how to solve a problem that we can’t fix, that we lose sight of the time. Our lives are whizzing by, and the ground is coming close.

Have you gotten caught up in trying to control something you can’t? If you have, maybe it’s time to stop trying to fix it and instead save your own life.

God, grant me awareness of what I need to do to take care of myself.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go

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