‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘that I do actually want to skydive.’
Then I added with a mock-serious expression: ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury told me that I should.’ My instructor – Stu – looked at me with a ‘Why couldn’t I get a normal student?’ expression on his face.
Just two days earlier, I’d – more or less – had a complete meltdown on the plane going up to do an initial skydive. I can hardly bear to think about it even now, but I was almost hysterical about getting to the door and doing the skydive I’d been coached to do.
It wasn’t my finest hour. It certainly wasn’t my proudest moment. Ashamed, I could hardly look anyone in the eye and was distraught and angry with myself, suffering a complete sense of humour loss, and left wondering what I thought I was doing.
I still can’t answer that question.
Friends back in the UK were sympathetic and understanding, but some were also bracing in their sympathy. ‘Get back in the sky,’ was the consensus of my skydiving friends, ‘You’ve done it before. You can do it again.’
I had a lot to think about. It’s not the end of the world when things go wrong, but how we deal with those moments will prove what sort of perseverance we have and what sort of character we develop.
If I didn’t do this thing, I would regret it. If I didn’t get back in the plane and jump into the sky at 16,000 feet, a little of me would always feel a failure. No, it’s not the end of the world, but actually, it does sort of matter.
As I was thinking all this, I saw a post on social media from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It made me grin, slightly wryly, but he was quite right.
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury,’ I now told Stu, ‘says that we are least what we could be when we fear and most what we should be when we trust.’
Not sure Stu was hugely convinced.
However. The fact remained that my fear had overridden – completely – what I wanted to do and to be. If I’d trusted the instructors – and there were two of them going with me so I was never alone in the sky – as I should have done, I’d have got through it and done the skydive.
So when Stu asked me if I wanted to be put back on the manifest (list of people going up in the plane to skydive), I firmly said, ‘Yes.’
As I climbed in the plane this time, I felt far more at peace. I’d warned John – the secondary instructor – that I was going to sing to keep me in a happy place. Some friends promised to pray, while others said they would send up positive vibes.
I looked out of the window and watched the view as the plane climbed higher. In my head and then out loud I sang one of my favourite songs – Stuart Townend’s version of Psalm 23.
I apologised to John who was right in front of me, for the singing. He complained about that, but complained more when I accidentally slipped off the seat because of the plane’s steep climb and fell onto him. This made us both giggle – probably the best thing that could have happened as I was still grinning when I saw that we were getting close to doing the jump.
The door opened and it was my turn to go. With a sense of calm I didn’t have the first time, I took a deep breath, knelt on the edge, turned to one instructor as part of the drill to ‘check in’, to the other to ‘check out’ so that we all knew we were ready, leaned forward, then backwards and then pushed myself out into the air.
The last time I wrote a blog about skydiving (October 2014) I called it ‘I believe I can fly’. It should have been called ‘I believe I can fall like an anvil towards the earth.’ For the first few seconds, while I couldn’t breathe properly, my mind shut down. And then words ran through my mind, real words, the words that I had been taught and recited to myself over and over and over again over the past weeks. Heading. Alti. Secondary. Primary. The drill that mattered and would get me through those first moments.
Although after that, I did get a few things wrong, to be honest. I mistook a ‘Look at your altimeter’ sign for a ‘Hey Heth, you’re doing fine’ gesture. The careful body arch I thought I was making was nothing like. And I half-fought with my instructor over where I thought the pull to open the parachute was.
But suddenly it felt like someone had wrenched me up by the shoulder straps and abruptly stopped me in mid-air. One of us had done it right and the parachute was opening. Another drill took over in my head and I counted up to the requisite number, before looking up to see a beautiful (trust me, it is very beautiful) canopy over my head.
Now ‘I believe I can fly’ was a little more accurate. I told the world once more that I loved this game and even sang a couple more lines of Psalm 23 as my instructors were unlikely to complain, as they’d disappeared towards the ground at far greater speed than I could even think about.
The reward for overcoming fear and trusting the two instructors to deliver exactly what I genuinely believed they would, was once again this unique view of the planet. Fields of rice, row upon row of olive trees, intensely clear blue skies and a quality of silence like no other I’ve ever experienced.
But before I got too carried away, there were more instructions to follow and a landing pattern to put into place. I’d love to say it was a textbook landing, but that would only be if the textbook said, ‘At the last minute forget how to land properly and crash heavily into the hardest bit of ground you can find.’ The bruise on my left leg is still quite impressive.
I got up – eventually – and began to try and pack up the canopy with the help of my instructor, who was probably wondering why his student had all the grace of a house brick while landing.
‘You’re not going to blub are you?’ came his voice.
‘No,’ I said, lying, as I was sniffing a bit. Truth is that I was overwhelmed about what had just happened. That the fear that had paralysed me had been overcome enough for me to throw myself into 16,000 ft of nothingness.
The thoughts of the friends all across the world, who were willing me on or praying or both had helped. Singing had helped. But most of all, trusting two people who knew what they were doing and wouldn’t let me down, had brought a reward which still makes me smile as I write this.
It won’t make the fears go away but serves as a reminder that – as Arthur Hugh Clough said – they may well be liars. Trusting allows us to be what we should be, fears hold us back and prevent us from getting anywhere near what we could be.
And, by the way, never underestimate your value as a friend or supporter in someone else’s life. As I walked towards the gate out of the landing area, I noticed a group of people who had gathered to watch the skydivers as they landed.
But as I got closer, I realise it was many of those people who had only two days before commiserated with me about what had happened when I had a meltdown. And here they were to support and cheer me in after I’d landed. Some of the very experienced skydivers had offered support and advice and even admitted to their own fears. It had all helped.
Now I did cry a little as a big tough military guy jumped over the chain fence and ran towards me to give me a big hug.
‘Well done darlin’’ he said, ‘I knew you could do it.’
Eventually I carried on walking towards the hangar, flanked by John and Stu. Brave of them, considering I could have burst into song at any moment. Instead, I thanked them both for sticking with me. Then I thought perhaps I should tell them what had really happened in the doorway of the plane.
‘I’ve got a confession,’ I said to the two instructors walking either side of me, ‘When I jumped out, I had my eyes shut.’
‘That’s all right,’ they both answered, ‘So did we.’
Tractorgirl66 