Fear of Flying

This probably won't come as a surprise to most of you, given my fearful nature overall, but I am afraid of flying. That's not to say I haven't flown. I have. Six torturous times. Actually those were round trips, so that really means twelve tortuous times.

I have been afraid to fly since I was a preteen. For some reason in my preteen years I was plagued with nightmares about plane crashes. Never having been on a plane, I couldn't be sure, but they seemed pretty realistic to me. No problem, I figured, I'll just never fly.

Obviously, that didn't work out for me.

I haven't been on a plane for at least 14 years.

Now, we've been invited to Thanksgiving at JD & Janel's in South Carolina. They extended the invitation on their way home from our house at Christmas. JD, thoughtfully, wanted to give me time to prepare for the trip.

The first month, all I did was tell myself, "I'm going to South Carolina for Thanksgiving", you know, to get used to the idea. Then in February, I started researching taking the train. I would love to take the train, it's one of my dreams to go on a train trip. However, it's a long trip with many transfers, layovers, and in my opinion, the Amtrak site is hard to navigate.

So, now it's March. I went online and looked up the fear of flying class offered for free at Sky Harbor Airport. The next class is in May and they're not taking sign ups yet. So, I signed up for the fear of flying newsletter.

After signing up, I told Dan that my heart was already racing and my arms felt numb. But, I was proud of myself for taking a baby step.

The reason I'm telling you all this, is to have some accountability partners. I need to figure out how to get on the plane. I have almost eight months to prepare myself.

Of course Dan's big worry is that I'll manage to get on the plane in Phoenix, and then refuse to get on the plane in South Carolina!

Seriously, I'd appreciate some prayer support on this one...