Climbing Above

A few years ago, I took off from a small town in southern Georgia flying a Cherokee 180 bound for Nashville, Tennessee. Flight service told me that there was a thick overcast at thirty-five hundred feet, but that it should be no problem.

After about an hour, I began to notice that I was flying lower and lower in order to avoid entering the cloud cover. My altitude was now only fifteen hundred feet, much too low to clear the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains that separate Georgia from Tennessee.

I looked at my radio Omni. Its arrow was lolling to one side. I was obviously not receiving a signal from the Nashville Vortac beacon ahead. I picked up the microphone and called the nearest Flight Service Station to get information about changing weather conditions, but I could receive no answer. I was flying too low for my electronic guidance and communication systems to be of any use. Yet, if I were to climb higher, I would be inside the cloud cover.

I thought of turning back to the airfield I had left, but that was an hour away, and I had no way of knowing what weather conditions there were now, and without electronic guidance, I had no navigation aid but my magnetic compass by which to find a small field with no navigation aids on site.

I considered alternative airports such as Atlanta where there would be electronic guidance systems available, but with marginal weather conditions and high volume of commercial jets in the pattern, I would probably be turned away.

There seemed to be only one logical alternative. I had been trained in instrument flight although I was not rated. Still, this was an emergency. I pushed the throttle all the way forward and eased back on the control yoke. The plane began to climb, and I was immediately immersed in thick white clouds. It was like flying in a bottle of milk. There was no outside visibility. I couldn't even see my own wing tip lights.

I glued my eyes on the instruments to keep the plane straight and level and in a controlled climb of about a thousand feet a minute. I watched the altimeter wind up past three thousand, then four thousand, then five thousand. I began to think, "I don't know how thick this ceiling is." Although the plane was rated at eighteen thousand feet, my lungs were not. As a non smoker with good lung capacity, I thought I might be O. K. up to about twelve thousand feet. But with no oxygen on board, beyond that, I would be in danger of losing consciousness. I sweated, and the minutes ticked by, and the plane continued to climb.

At eight thousand, five hundred feet, suddenly I broke through the top. God's sun shown brightly, and there was unlimited visibility in all directions. The Omni compass, which had been inactive, was now centered on a course for Nashville. Flight service in Nashville answered my call and told me that the weather there was clear with fifteen miles visibility.

I am told that depression is the fastest growing ailment in our society. People who were formerly happy with their lives suddenly become despondent, filled with regret or overcome with a great feeling of loss. Perhaps some incident in their lives has triggered this depression like the death of a loved one or loss of a job or relationship. Sometimes it is a series of bad decisions that leaves a person feeling that there is no place to turn and no reason to live. It's in times like these that you need to climb above all the things that are weighing you down and get a glimpse of a new life.

There is a chorus I like to sing once in a while that goes:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of his glory and grace.

(Lemmel, Helen H. Copyright 1922 from 1950 Singspiration Music.)

Looking up to Jesus is a good way to start living above all the things that are holding you down. It works for me.