Back to Business

Headed home!! The days were long and the weeks flew by. It's impossible to believe I came with zero hours of experience and left without having to repeat a single sortie! Christ was obviously sufficient in my great deficiencies! And it feels great to be done but then I realize that wasn't even the beginning. It was simply the screening process to see if I could even make it to he beginning. Tryouts.

Some things in the next phase will be similar but the greatest difference will be time spent in visual contact with the sun. I now feel like I've always under-appreciated windows. I love windows.

One similar component we will also receive at UPT is the standup emergency procedure. It's the air force's own public humiliation version of the grade school spelling bee. You're stood up in front of the entire flight and given an in-air emergency situation. You must-in great detail (going as far as what your fingers will be doing)-explain how you will bring the airplane from the emergency safely to the ground. If you are in your seat watching this take place the whole thing is very simplistic. But the moment you stand up all cognitive abilities are lost and all you really hope is that the IP realizes your ignorance sooner than later and calls someone else up to take control and relieve you from your stupidity. "It's a cup...with dirt in it. Just give me an F and move on."

I do think IFS has prepared me well for the next phase and I feel like I'm now on a more level playing field with some of the other guys who have prior flight time. As of yesterday I am the proud owner of 17.9 flight hours, 0.4 of which are solo and 0.1 is counted as night flying (the ONLY perk of getting up at 3:25am (please note that while it was a perk it in no way came remotely close to making up for getting up at that unholy hour)).


A year ago I read this from Isaiah, "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." This is what the Lord has done for me. This verse has become real to me. I did not know how to get here but I did know it would be hard. And I don't know how to get where I'm going but I know it will also be difficult. But now, after these past few weeks, I know this is what the Lord has for me because I can see clearly how He brought me here. So I can run with confidence into it. Not confidence that I will succeed but confidence that this is what the Lord wants me to do and these are the people the Lord wants me to be with. What great comfort! 


My only fear is that I will forget this when training becomes tough and my focus will drift from God's direction to striving for success. That sounds exhausting just thinking about it. I don't want this to be a year of exhaustion, something I merely endure to see what's next. The people that will be in my class are already complaining about the long hours we'll have and all the stuff we'll have to memorize but I want to be able to enjoy it. Pray for joy for me. Because, honestly, when they make me get up to attend a 4am formal brief (that's night not morning (I'm confident 4am formal briefs come straight from the devil)) it will take a heavenly intervention to keep me from misery.