Airborne for a Season

Ever since I was a teen, I have been afraid of flying. When I say afraid, I don’t mean that I don’t get on airplanes. Rather, I mean that on one flight out of four I freak out midair when I realize that we’re in a cloud or feel the suddent jolt of a thunderstorm. That’s my pattern. And its my pattern not just on airplanes or hikes up tall steep mountains (yep, that gets me too sometimes!).

This fear is ultimately my body’s physical reaction to a perceived threat of danger that my mind manifests in things like shaking knees, mild panic attacks, and a deep sense of irrational dread. You see, its not the taking flight thing that scares me, its the actual experience of being high up in the air. Time stands still in these moments high up in the air and its all I can do to bear the time long enough before we make it back to safety.

But here’s the crazy thing: I’ve learned recently that flying on a passenger airline is one of the safest ways we can transport our fragile bodies. Statistics back this up. A 2016 article by Forbes goes so far as to state that “in the last 7 years you were more likely to be hit by a car than to die in an airline crash.” How’s that for statistics?! I’ve learned, too, that my fear of flying in some ways has nothing to do with the heights or the thin air or the rumbling clouds. It has everything to do with my mindset.

“Fate is how your life unfolds when you let fear determine your choices. A path of destiny reveals itself to you, however, when you confront your fear and make conscious choices.” -Caroline Myss

For many years, maybe my whole life, I believed that my deepest safety lies in my ability to control my surroundings and orchestrate my future. This belief served me really well in K-12 education, a traditional job, and even in dating when my life was a bit more “ordinary.” It helped me predict and realize a certain kind of life, and even a certain level of income, at a certain point in time. It enabled me to get to the point where I am today.

However, I do not crave a life spent on the ground, brimming with an irrational fear of going into the skies. I crave adventure and there’s nothing I love more than the kind of travel that makes my stomach go “whoah” and my “danger ahead” meter tilt off the charts. If i’m honest, I want to step out of my comfort zone and overcome my fear once and for all.

I do not crave a life spent on the ground, brimming with an irrational fear of going into the skies. I crave adventure and there’s nothing I love more than the kind of travel that makes my stomach go “whoah.”

For me, flying is about surrender. It is about handing the controls over to a pilot for a few hours, sometimes more, and trusting him to navigate us back to earth. After many years, I am finally in a season where this flying metaphor applies equally to the rest of my day-to-day existence. I don’t crave the well-trodden path of corporate life or culdesacs. I crave a bolder, messier way of being: one that requires frequent bookings for new destinations, deliberate carving through thunderstorms, and regular check-ins with God to ensure i’m letting him do the real work of flying the plane. So I finally put a stake in the ground this fall and moved towards my desires in a big way.

The Flight Plan

Yesterday I moved all of my belongings into a storage unit. Prior to that I “downsized” my footprint to an amount of stuff that could fit comfortably into my Mini Cooper. My capsule wardrobe took on a whole new meaning. All my pots and pans made it into cardboard boxes. My plants found their way to a new abode. And for the first time ever, my home became earth proper rather than a particular place. I have a loose plan to settle somewhere mid-November, but no firm long-term plans as of yet.

This decision to niche down and go mobile was a scary one; one that every fiber in my “predict the future” body wanted to resist, but one that my adventuresome, “allow the future to unfold” spirit called forth. My mobile life will allow me to spend more money going places, and focus energies I might otherwise invest in nesting and acquiring towards investing in others, exploring and writing.

Later this week and for most of the fall, I am truly hitting the road with destinations like Austin, Denver, and Madrid on the books. For the first time ever, I don’t have the slightest inclination where this journey might lead. I have concrete dreams and future business aspirations, sure, but this time of intentional wandering is about letting God take the pilot’s seat and taking life fully and completely one day at a time.

It is a chance to live like the birds and truly rely on my father God to feed me. And gosh does it feel good to trust that this season will feed not only my physical body, but also my soul.

This season is about “upleveling” myself to a higher realm of consciousness. In this higher realm, the preferred energy is “allow” energy, the kind that welcomes things in as they emerge around me rather than working to control every ounce of my existence. It is a chance to live like the birds who do not sow or reap or store away in barns and truly rely on my father God to feed me. And gosh does it feel good to trust that this season will feed not only my physical body, but also my soul. Follow my ongoing journey at #disruptmainst and on Instagram at @rebeccadesigns.