Flight to Heaven Page 6

  He had listened to me talk about our trip around the world, listened to my farfetched fantasies of flying jets, my admiration for the pilots who flew them, my desire to use my mind in a profession, my apprehensions about the boredom of sacking sawdust or being stuck in an office doing the same things day in and day out for the rest of my life.

  “Have you ever thought about flying?”

  The question followed me like a stray, not only for the next few days but for the next few years. His brother Paul, whom I also knew well, had been taking flying lessons and loved it. “Try it,” he said. “I think you would be good at it.”

  It seemed a wish-upon-a-star type aspiration. Something right out of a fairy tale. After all, I was just a kid. And flying was a man’s job. Where would I get the training? Where would I get the money for the training?

  Ron was thirteen years older than I was, a genius with a near-photographic memory. He was quiet and humble yet had a prodigious grasp of scientific things, which made him fascinating to listen to. Talking with Ron stimulated my inquisitive young mind. I was full of questions, and he was full of answers. Yet he never made me feel stupid for asking or for not knowing something. I respected him. And I took everything he said seriously. But nothing more seriously than the words “Try it. I think you would be good at it.”

  Ron’s brother Paul began to fan the flames of the burning desire to fly that was smoldering under the surface. I feared talking about it with my parents. Mom would be fearful. Dad would be practical. I also feared talking about it with my granddad, whom I adored. He had started the business that I was now a part of. Nothing would please him more than to see me follow in his footsteps. Nothing would disappoint him more than for me to follow another set of footsteps.

  It would be another four years, the summer of 1968, before I got up the courage to take my first lesson.

  My instructor was a man named Terry, an airline pilot who had given up a safe and secure job as a banker for the adventure of flying. One day I met Terry at Brackett Airfield, bought a pilot’s logbook, gave him thirty dollars, and we took off.

  I had always been good with machines. I was driving tractors at age ten, then forklifts, then giant Caterpillar front-end loaders, then 18-wheelers. I loved the feel of machines. They felt like an extension of who I was. But no machine prepared me for the Cessna 150 we flew that day.

  I sat beside Terry in the cockpit as we flew around the Southern California city of Ontario. It was an oh-my-gosh moment. A moment I never forgot. And a moment that kept me coming back, plunking down another thirty dollars, and another and another, to recapture that thrill.

  I felt free when I was flying. Above the fray of traffic. Above the worries of the workaday world. Above the boundaries of stop signs and double lines, signs that signaled No U-turns or Speed Limit 35. Here I was untrammeled by the rules and regulations of everyday life. Here I was free to be me. Here was where I belonged. And I knew it on the first flight.

  I learned everything I could as fast as I could. I took as many lessons as I could afford, learning how to taxi, steer the rudders with my feet, take off, guide the aircraft with fingertip pressure on the controls, everything.

  Nothing felt as good as being in the cockpit, lifting off from earth, and taking flight. Nothing. And now nothing could stop me from becoming a professional pilot.

  I would drive a truck at night, earning a decent income. I took aviation ground school between my afternoon classes and work—went to school during the day—and flew every chance I got in between. After I had taken twenty hours of flight instruction from Terry, I met Chuck and took the rest from him.

  Finally, in June 1969, after logging sixty hours in the air, I was ready for my test with the FAA, the regulatory board that issues licenses for pilots. Chuck and I were taking one of our routine flights with a stop in Visalia. It was there we parted ways and I hopped into the Cessna 150 that I had rented for the short fifteen-minute flight to Tulare, where I was scheduled to meet the flight examiner for my private pilot flight test. Chuck had signed me off for a solo flight so I could make the hop to my flight check destination. His last-minute instruction replayed in my mind as I taxied over to the hangar. “Relax, you’re more than ready,” he had said. “And remember, when he asks a question, just give him the exact answer. No more and no less. And treat him with respect.” That’s all the advice Chuck gave me. But it proved to be enough.

  After I landed the airplane, I taxied to the large former WWII hangar where I was to meet the man who had the power to approve my pilot’s license. The examiner was a relaxed fiftyish WWII veteran. We quickly exchanged preliminary information, strapped ourselves into the aircraft, and proceeded with my flight exam. My attention was so focused that it seemed like only moments before we were again landing and taxiing to the hangar. The check ride was over. The examiner shook my hand in congratulations and signed my log book. I was now a licensed pilot.

  That was the biggest day of my life. I could fly alone. I was a pilot on my way to living my dream.

  “Have you ever thought about flying?” Ron had asked four years before.

  And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

  8

  SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST HIGH

  A shooting pain in my shoulder brought me back to earth.

  It was no longer June of ’69. It was July. What a difference a month makes.

  In the days that followed, friends were still coming by to visit. Now it was more friends from our church and less from school. Howard and Ginny Dunn were two of them. They were friends of our family for a long time and it lifted my spirits to see them.

  “How are you doing, Dale?” Howard asked.

  “Thankful to be alive and happy to be home.”

  “I think God gave me a Scripture He wants me to share with you.”

  What does God have for me? I wondered.

  He paused, waiting for my permission.

  “Please. Go ahead.”

  He picked up his Bible and thumbed through its well-worn pages. “Psalm 91,” he said, and started reading: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

  Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

  I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress;

  My God; in Him I will trust.

  Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler,

  And from the perilous pestilence.

  He shall cover you with His feathers,

  And under His wings you shall take refuge:

  His truth shall be your shield and buckler.

  You shall not be afraid of the terror by night;

  Nor for the arrow that flies by day,

  Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,

  Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

  A thousand may fall at your side,

  And ten thousand at your right hand;

  But it shall not come near you.

  Psalm 91:1-7”

  Tears burned my eyes. I had never heard that before. As he read, it was like the first light of dawn in my spirit, a spirit that had been wandering in the dead of night trying to find answers.

  I was alive not because I had been living a good life for Him. To the contrary, I was living my own life for me. I had a deep sense that the prayers of my parents and grandparents over the years had somehow protected me. I wasn’t certain, but I thought so. All I was certain of was that it wasn’t anything I had done.

  Why me? was the question that burned within me. And now this psalm shed light on a possible answer. Why was I spared? I think it had something to do with God’s sovereign purpose. It wasn’t only because He loved me. It was because He had plans for me. What those plans were wasn’t clear at the time. What was clear was that He had been my fortress against the blunt force trauma that had killed the other pilots. I hit the same dome my friends hit and at the same speed. We all impacted the monument within inches of each other. I needed the strength of a fortress to s
urvive the crash. But I needed the softness of feathers to survive the fall.

  Why was I allowed to get on that flight in the first place? If God was providentially protecting me, why not keep me from the accident altogether?

  Because I think there were more important things that needed protecting than my physical being or my vocational dreams. The broken bones would lead to a broken spirit. God loved the heart of the little boy I once was. Somewhere along the way to growing up, my heart lost its way. He was turning me back, showing me where I had lost my way, and letting me begin again from where I had started, back in the fifth grade when I surrendered my life to God and invited Jesus into my heart.

  It was a piece of the larger puzzle. A big piece. It was what I needed at the moment. Everything wasn’t clear, but clear enough that I could take the next step. Which was good, because that’s all the strength I had.

  I didn’t have strength for the entire journey. Just enough for the next step.

  The next step landed me in the backyard.

  I had wheeled myself there to soak up some summer sun and to read what I could of the Bible my parents had given me at graduation. If God had a plan for me, I wanted to know about it. More important, I wanted to know Him.

  Even though I was an athlete who had driven trucks and flown planes, traveled the world and achieved a lot of success, there was so much in me that hadn’t matured. I had the body of a well-developed man. I had been a body builder. I could walk up and down stairs on my hands, do somersaults off the high dive; I excelled at sports. Yet if you had put a mirror up to my spiritual life, I was the proverbial ninety-eight-pound weakling. I had no spiritual strength, no stamina, nothing at all to rely on in the spiritual realm.

  If indeed there is a spiritual battle going on all around us, I was not a warrior but a water boy.

  And I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a warrior, one of the King’s men. But first I had to know the King. And I started getting to know Him that afternoon in the backyard.

  I used my good eye to read. The Bible lay on my lap, flopped open. I read as the sunlight danced through the trees, as the wind whispered through its branches, sometimes turning the pages for me. It was so peaceful back there. My life had been so busy chasing my dreams that I never had time like this, just to sit and read and think, to enjoy the warmth of the sun on my arms, the breath of the sky against my face.

  I desired a friendship with the God who had spared my life. If I were ever to walk again, it would be with Him on His path, not mine. If I were ever to run again, it would be for Him, on the course He set before me. And if I were ever to fly again, it would be with Him at the controls. He would not be my copilot; I would be His. Who knows where we would go together; but wherever it was, it would be together. No more flying solo.

  It was during these visits with God that I began to realize that if I were ever going to be normal again, God would have to do the miraculous and I would have to do the arduous.

  There was a lot of hard work ahead. It would be all uphill with the wind in my face. But I wouldn’t be going it alone.

  I couldn’t really do anything in the way of physical therapy. I was still in casts, a wheelchair, and a lot of pain. Where to start when everything is broken?

  I started with my eye. Somehow I got the idea that my damaged eye needed exercise. The doctor had told me I would not regain sight in that eye. At best, I would be able to distinguish light from darkness. Without telling anyone, and when no one was around, I taped my good eye shut and forced myself to use my injured eye.

  It was painful at first. I could only see shadows. Light and darkness registered, but nothing else. Day after day I did this. And day after day I thanked Him. I thanked Him for what I saw, and I thanked Him in advance that someday I would see normally again. I clung to the Scripture “For we walk by faith, not by sight” that I found in 2 Corinthians 5:7. It was going to take faith to get my sight back. I wasn’t going to get faith by simply praying for it. Faith would come by believing and then acting upon what God said in His Word.

  During that time I began to realize that if I was ever going to be normal again, it would require two things: First, the hand of God to perform a series of miracles on my body. And second, an enormous amount of effort on my part.

  One day while trying to read the Bible with my injured eye, my brother walked up behind me. I was straining so intently to read that I hadn’t noticed him.

  “What are you doing, Dale? Why do you have tape over your left eye?”

  His questions felt like an inquisition, and I felt like a fool. I wasn’t about to explain. My faith was growing, but still I was timid and self-conscious.

  “I was just experimenting, that’s all. I wanted to see how much I could see with my right eye. I think it’s a little better.”

  “Did you have to tape your good eye shut to find out?” His chiding stung, and he pulled off the tape.

  After that I was more careful about doing my exercises. And I was more careful about what I said and to whom I said it. My faith was fragile but growing. As it grew, I began to feel more confident that God was going to heal me, that I would be normal again, that I would walk again, run again, fly again.

  Eventually I got to the point where I could go to church. That wasn’t something high on my list before the crash. Now it was. It wasn’t a religious routine I sought. It was a relationship with the Most High, the Almighty, the One who had been my refuge and my fortress, the One who had delivered me from the snare, who had covered me with His feathers.

  God wasn’t theoretical anymore. He was personal. And now my relationship with Him was personal.

  I had a lot of attention that first Sunday I went back, both from the pulpit and from the pews. But gradually I began to blend in. As I did, I noticed something I had never given a second thought to before. There were other people at church in wheelchairs: a person who had been crippled in an accident, one from a disease, another from a disability. I felt enormous compassion for them, seeing them from the vantage point of someone who was also disabled. I found myself wheeling my way over to them, striking up a conversation, asking about their lives. It was the first time that had ever happened. Sunday after Sunday they had come. And Sunday after Sunday I had ignored them. How many others have ignored them? I wondered. How hurtful that must have felt, being marginalized like that. Sitting while everyone else was standing. Listening to fragments of conversations that others were having. No one stooping to talk with you, ask how you were doing, let alone ask you over for a meal or out to a movie.

  It broke my heart . . . in places I didn’t know needed breaking.

  9

  FEAR AND MEMORY LOSS

  Since I couldn’t fly yet, I thought it would be a step forward to audit the aviation ground school at a local junior college. Several of my high school peers were attending there, and Anna, my long-time girlfriend, was willing to regularly drive me to the college and even wheel me into the class. I couldn’t do much but listen, learn, and use my right hand to turn the pages of my book and take notes. I thought a few sessions would get me thinking in the right direction again.

  The instructor took me under his wing and encouraged me in my commitment to aviation. Since everyone in the class was an aspiring pilot, they had all heard about the crash, and I was somewhat of a celebrity. The instructor approached me and asked me to speak to the class about aviation safety. It was a great opportunity to express some of the concerns I’d developed since the crash.

  “Intersection departures should not be made for any reason,” I began. “The pilot in command should take control immediately if he senses any problems. Learn the FAA regulations—always obey the regulations. . . .” I droned on with my newfound convictions. But before long I found it impossible to stick to my well-rehearsed speech.

  Then I remembered the boldness of Peter and John when they answered a disbelieving team of religious leaders who had commanded them not to speak about Jesus anymore. Peter and John answered and
said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

  I’m not leaving this classroom without telling these people what God has done for me, I decided. I felt the same overwhelming love in my heart for these students as I did for the hospital staff and the people in the cars on the freeway when I awoke from the coma months earlier. I thought of Chuck Burns, my flight instructor and friend, whom I never told about Jesus. I reflected on the pain and guilt of his eternal loss. These thoughts were enough to stop me in the midst of my “better safe than sorry” message.

  “There is only one reason that I am alive and talking to you today . . .” As my eyes flooded with tears, I paused to regain control of my voice. “God saved my life. God loves me very much, but He loves each of you no less. Jesus Christ came into this world to die so that you can live.” I looked around the room and noticed that every eye seemed intently focused on me.

  “I challenge each of you to read what Jesus said and taught in the Bible. You can do it quickly and easily. Get a red-letter edition of the New Testament, and just read the red letters, the words Jesus spoke. You owe it to yourself to find out if Jesus is the Son of God. He either is or He isn’t. You decide. But if you find that He truly is the Son of God, wouldn’t you want to learn more about Him?”

  I continued, “I’ve done this exact exercise, and I don’t believe for a moment that any mere man, no matter how great or educated, could say and do the things Jesus did. It wouldn’t be possible. I challenge you to learn about the free gift of eternal life with God, which you only receive by believing on Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

  As I rolled back to my desk, my classmates erupted first with loud applause, and then a standing ovation. The response only brought more tears to my eyes. But I could tell by the teacher’s expression that my lesson was not quite the one he’d had in mind.