People continue to ask me where I am at with my flying? Do I have my license yet? and so on.. all the while I sit and watch as my friends get their license and are even finishing up with their commercial. So this is where I am at with it.. For over a year a was going to doctors and specialists traveling out of state to see one of them, and filling out a mountain of paper work and trying to get the FAA to give me the OK and give me my medical certificate needed to even solo. I was more than ready to solo even starting into my instrument training before I finally got a letter back from the FAA. While the letter did give me permission... it came with a big BUT... BUT you have to see a psychologist once a month and report to us... I made the decision that it was just not going to work if I had to do that every single month. That was too much money and too much time of which I had neither. I went through a period after that of feeling like the biggest failure ever! Truth be told, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with aviation, all I knew was that I enjoyed it. But when it became increasingly difficult to attain my license, it became that much more desirable to me to do it. I do not like being told what I can and cannot do. To be able to get my license felt like it would be my way of saying I CAN do big things! I am strong enough! I AM smart enough! Despite how people made me feel all through elementary school and all the way through high school, I would show them that even though I struggled in school and learned differently than the other kids, I could still be successful in what ever I wanted to do! I love traveling and I love just being in planes, after my first flight in a DA20, I knew I loved to fly! I felt free and strong and an overwhelming sense of self worth. So walking away from aviation devastated me!.... And while it still tends to feel like salt on an open wound when I see those around me doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing right now, I have come back to knowing who I REALLY am, and I am comforted by this knowledge: My career, my skills, my location, my talents, my level in school, my health DO NOT DEFINE ME! Who I am is and was and always will be a child of the one true King God Almighty because of his One and Only Son JESUS CHRIST!...I am loved, I am cherished, I am desired, I am precious. I have been humbly reminded that I cannot find my joy and my happiness in aviation, or in photography, or art, or a man, or my friends, or even my family, but my joy is in Jesus Christ! Coming back to that has filled me with the most intense emotions! My purpose and my identity have been given to me by the Father and I don't need to look for it anywhere else ever again but I can be content in who I am and in where I am! Someday I hope to try the aviation thing again but when I am free from antidepressants. And IF I get my license, it will be a blessing from God... a gift from God... BUT... It will NOT be my happiness. Don't ever let things define who you are. Things can be easily taken away from you. But let God be the one to tell you who you are! And let God be your joy and happiness!
James 1:2-3 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trails of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance."
Luke 15:3-7 "Then Jesus told them this parable: 'Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.'"
Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."