Who Is Packing Your Parachute?
Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really
important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on
something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something
nice for no reason.
Charles Plumb, a US Naval Academy graduate, was a jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75
combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and
parachuted into enemy lands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese
prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table
came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft
carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"
"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb. "I packed your
parachute," the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I
guess it worked!" Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked,
I wouldn't be here today."
Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept
wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform , a white hat, a bib in the
back, and bell bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even
said good morning, how are you or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot, and he
was just a sailor."
Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the
bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute,
holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who is packing your parachute?"
Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb
also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over
enemy territory , he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional
parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching
safety.
His experience reminds us all to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie
ahead. As you go through this week, this month, this year . . . recognize the people who
pack YOUR parachute!
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To share inspirational items or to write
me:
cj5@q.com
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"Reach
up and take your Father's hand
and say what my daughter Andrea said to me,
'I'm not sure where I am.
I'm not sure which is the road
home.
But you do
and that's enough.'"
("And the Angels Were Silent," by Max Lucado)
"For I am the Lord, your God,
who takes hold of your right
hand
and says to you,
'Do not
fear; I will help you.'"
(Isaiah 41:13)
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following information:
Thank you!
