Just jump
Just a casual pic of me jumping out of an airplane.
My daughters and I made plans to go skydiving for what would have been Trav’s 50th birthday on July 7th. We wanted to honour his adventurous spirit and celebrate big. We got up on his day ready for an amazing day.
It was a complete shit show. Nothing went right. After several plans falling apart, we made it to the skydiving location only to find out they were cancelling our jump due to inclement weather.
In the end, all of our big birthday plans ended up being dinner out at a restaurant we have been to a million times. It was nice. And not at all what we had planned or hoped for.
We made plans to postpone our skydiving adventure to the girls’ birthday just a few weeks later. I was so disappointed. And I also spent some time considering why this day went the way it did. Was there more to this that I wasn’t aware of?
Fast forward a couple of weeks to the girls birthday and we are off again to our skydiving destination. The weather was beautiful and the morning went smoothly. Okay,this was looking better.
When we got there we learned that we couldn’t all go in the airplane at the same time. It just made the most sense that my girls would go together. Which meant I would go by myself. Hmmm. Not happy about that.
And then I decided to reframe this. Maybe I was going by myself, so that Travis could very obviously come with me. And that he did. He was SO present throughout the entire experience. On the plane ride up, free falling from 10,000 feet, parachuting over Okanagan lake, and the thrill of it all. It was absolutely AMAZING!
And then as I waited for my girls to head up and complete their jump, it felt as though Trav was actually talking to me. He didn’t want us to jump on his birthday, because he didn’t want any of this to be about him. He wanted this experience to be about my own journey moving forward.
I’ve got some really exciting things happening right now. Things that require courage, and trust, and some letting go. The metaphor of jumping out of an airplane is not lost on me. On this day, I could hear him encouraging me to jump with everything I’ve got. Jump into the things that bring me happiness, joy, and new adventures. And do it for me. Not to honour him, but to honour myself. And of course he gave me these sweet words while jumping out of an airplane.
