As a child, I used to see airplanes fly across the sky, leaving their fuel trails that looked like column clouds to me. I can remember wondering how something that big could get up into the air and fly. I have flown enough now that I do not think about that anymore.
I just get on the airplane and fly. I take for granted that things will go like they always do when I fly.
I did that until last summer.
That’s when I was blessed to go to Bolivia. I had been before, so I knew the drill ótake off from Charlotte, fly to Miami, then to Bolivia. Once we were on the airplane, we made it fine to Miami. We boarded our connecting flight and after a very smooth takeoff, we were in the sky on our red-eye flight to Bolivia.
The last time we went to Bolivia, it was on a red-eye flight. I had trouble sleeping. I guess the fact you have to fly over water so long to get to Bolivia made me afraid to go fully asleep in case we had a “water landing,” as they call it. I took something to help me sleep.
It was working really well until the pilot’s voice came over the PA system. He carefully chose his words to say this: “Ladies and gentlemen, we may have a slight problem with our right engine and we think it best to go back to Miami.”
These words will also make you sit up and take notice ó that is, unless you have taken something to help you sleep. The next thing I knew, my wife was trying to wake me up because we were approaching the airport in Miami.
I awoke to the sound of the pilot’s voice sharing these words: “Don’t be alarmed. There may be some emergency equipment on the runway when we land.”
Again, not the words you want to hear.
It was so hard to fight sleep and ponder my own death the same time. I woke up to look down as we approached the runway. There were way, way more than a few pieces of equipment. There were fire trucks and rescue vehicles and foam trucks and you name it. They all had their lights flashing. It looked like a scene out of a movie. It may have been one of the top 10 scariest moments of my life, but then again, I was too sleepy to take it all in.
We went into the airport for an hour and switched planes, and then we were once again on our way to Bolivia. I was more awake then, as adrenaline had won out over what I had taken for sleep.
I realized that we could have been part of a bad news story on the evening news. I realized as we flew over Cuba once again that I taken way too much for granted about flying.
After a very smooth landing at the airport in La Paz, Bolivia, I walked across the tarmac to go into the airport.
I found myself looking up into the sky as an airplane took off and wondering and asking the same question I did as a child: How do these things get up into the sky and stay up in sky?
I will never take so much for granted again about flying.
I wish I could do that with the rest of my life.
The Rev. Vance Lowe is senior pastor of First United Methodist Church, China Grove.