That One Time I Flew
...And my thoughts on God
When my sister and I were young, our home was the ultimate playground. No room, piece of furniture, kitchen utensil or piece of sports equipment was off limits; and just as often, no rules of safety applied.
A homemade wooden toy chest was the perfect spot for hide and seek; I can still remember the dark slab of wood closing over me as I looked up, crunched up inside, a wall of black swallowing the last sliver of light, waiting out a particularly long game.
I’d pry open my bedroom window to sit or walk on the adjacent rooftop, bare feet scraping against asphalt shingles as I shimmied to the edge, peering over with less apprehension than logic would dictate I should have had.
A dank basement with a concrete slab floor was, in turns, a baseball field, basketball court, and bowling alley. Once my sister and I found an old wooden baseball bat. I threw a basketball into the air for her to swing at; the bat connected with my head instead of the ball and, well, that was that.
And finally, there were the stairs.
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Right past the entry of our home, two stairs lead to a landing, then you turn left and take eleven more up to our bedrooms.
The challenge: Go up one step at a time, and jump down to the landing below. Progress to two, three, et al.
Neither of us got past four steps, because even our fearlessness couldn’t stand up against the cold hard reality that five- and six-year-old legs aren’t built for that impact.
We stopped playing that game one day, but the game didn’t leave my mind.
For some reason, I woke up the day after and felt more determined than ever.
Today was the day I’d not only get to four stairs; I’d get to eleven. The whole flight. And then I’d go tell my sister all about it.
Said sister was, at that time, in our family room downstairs with my parents. I heard them quietly talking as I shuffled out of my bedroom, sleepy eyes half shut, my toes edging over the top stair.
I can make it. This is just like two stairs; I just need a higher jump start.
I rubbed my eyes, swung my arms back, and leaped.
There’s no other way to explain what happened next except to say I was lifted.
Rather than gravity taking hold of me, I … suspended. My body inexplicably, and most gently, was lifted, moved forward and set on the landing below.
The sensation wasn’t unlike what I imagine a soft landing, courtesy of a handful of helium-filled balloons—a la Up—would feel like.
Reader, I know how this sounds. And yet even as I write about this three decades later, I still get the chills recalling that exact sensation. It’s never really left me.
When I hit 40, suddenly all I could think about was God; mortality; inevitability (that’s a softer way of saying DEATH); and everything and anything related to spirituality.
First I want to ask, is this normal? Is questioning our spiritual evolution just what happens at this age? Is it God’s way of sending down a warning flare during our bell lap, all, Just a heads up! Get your shit sorted because we’re on a time limit here!
I think about it a lot.
But my newest spiritual hamster wheel is this scenario—imagining our lives as a simulation, a cosmic video game of sorts.
In this “world,” the Benevolent Game Master Himself is at the helm, hitting right and left arrows, tapping A and B buttons, moving us painstakingly through each level of our existence.
I imagine that free will plays a role in this game, to be sure, but only in this way: Let’s say I’m Luigi in this scenario (little sibling vibes). I think I’m jumping over the Piranha Plant myself, but am I really? Is it me? Or is it that 80s gamer in the sky?
Weirdly, this perception of free will is comforting to me. Why? Because I want, or maybe need, to believe that some larger force is at play, and that even when we don’t understand the reality of this exact moment, there is a soft landing in the end.
No one can tell you to believe in God. And please don’t take my story here as an attempt at proselytizing.
I just know that I felt something that day. And I wanted to see if maybe you’ve ever felt it, too.
I think about my Jump a lot. How it makes no sense, yet also makes total sense. How, when my kids ask about God and what He is, or what he isn’t, I can use that experience to let them know that He’s not separate from us. He never has been. He has always, always been there, lifting us.
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Sonni, you really have a way with words. This gave me chills. The way you described your “jump” feels like such a picture of grace, of God’s nearness in the exact moment we most need Him. I’ve had my own moments that made no logical sense but were undeniable in how real they felt. I also love how you framed it as a 'soft landing', because isn’t that what faith so often is? The reminder that even when we leap without knowing what’s below, we are never really falling alone. Thank you for putting words to something so many of us quietly wrestle with.
💕💕💕💕