Free Falling

I feel so…alive.

This vacation has allowed me to take a step back and explore how I am without all of the pressures of life pushing at me. I’m really lazy. But, that’s not the point.

I’ve gotten to do some unbelievable things. For example, skydiving. It’s been on my bucket list, and honestly I never quite thought I would get to scratch it off. But, lo and behold, I went skydiving with my grandma in Eloy, Arizona.

We are staying in Casa Grande, and so we woke up and drove to Eloy last Saturday morning. We signed away all our rights, which terrified Nana, and we discovered that there had been a death there two days prior to our little excursion. That terrified Nana even more. But, surprisingly, she didn’t back out, and there was no way that I was going to anyway.

We suited up, walked out, and boarded the small plane. I thought that I would be nervous and desire to back out, but never once did I ever question what I was about to do.

We went tandem skydiving, which basically means that I was harnessed to an experienced skydiver. At 13,000 feet above the ground, we jumped. The air hit me in the face and knocked me breathless. We were in free-fall. I tried to breathe, but it was tantalizing. So I just stopped trying and focused on everything around me. I was in pure bliss. I felt so…alive. The adrenaline was pumping through me, and everything looked so minuscule below. Even though I was unable to breathe, I wasn’t concerned. I never wanted the free-fall to stop. But, too soon, my tandem instructor opened the parachute. I felt a sudden jerk, and our fall slowed its pace enormously. I could breathe again. This experience was different from the free-fall, but just as astounding. During the free-fall I had been horizontal, but now I was upright.  I felt as if I were floating, or perhaps walking on air. The world below my feet acting as my floor, even.

The landing was rough. I landed hard on my butt, and looked oh so graceful while doing it. I’ve got a video if you don’t believe me. My Nana says that she enjoyed it, but that it was definitely a one-time experience. I felt oppositely. I would do it over and over and over again until I died. The adrenaline. The view. The beauty. The danger of it all. I fell in love with skydiving, that’s for sure.

I refuse to describe in detail everything we have done on this magnificent trip, but I also refuse to simply list the activities; they deserve much more than that. So, I’m going to keep them to myself, a secret treasure to hold onto. I will let you in on something that happened today though, just because of the way it affected me. To start, it was a beautiful day outside. No, the sun was not out, but that didn’t matter. The weather felt heavenly. Nana and I were out riding our bikes, and suddenly it started raining. Nana was not happy, but I was. I love rain. Now, I know the science of it all, but there’s always been something  magical about it to me. The way it falls in tiny droplets, how it feels when it gently strokes your face, how it tastes when it hits your tongue, how it drips from your eyelashes, how its smell mixes with the smell of the air and you feel intoxicated from the aroma that I can only think to describe as pureness. So, we’re heading back to the RV, and it’s all I can do not to get off my bike and lay on the ground. I want to feel the hot concrete on my back as the chilling rain pools around me. But, Nana would kill me, so on I go. It’s still idyllic. It made me feel, again, so… alive. No matter what else happens today, that will be the best part. It reminded me of that song by Natasha Bedingfield: Unwritten. I won’t waste time including the lyrics. If you know it, you know it. If you don’t, well then hopefully you’re curious enough to google it. But just the reminder of that song while in this situation made me giggle. I thought of God. It felt like He was telling me to put all my mistakes behind me and just start living my life again. I can’t change the past, and I will never be able to not make mistakes. It might not have even been Him; it may have just been a coincidence. But, I hope it was Him. I hope that He cared enough to set me up in that situation so that I would finally feel forgiven by Him and to finally forgive myself. I hope He cared enough to purposefully send me the renewed sense of purpose, joy, and maybe even a sense of understanding. Understanding how He feels about me and how He can possibly love me when I’m so pathetically incorrigible.

I will end this post as I began it, because I do. I feel so…alive. 

And it excites me.