Recently, my oldest son has become almost obsessed with a documentary about the Navy’s top fighter pilots, The Blue Angels. You may have seen them on TV or possibly even at an air show performing breath-taking stunts in the air. Carson has decided (this week) that he’d like to be a Blue Angels pilot when he grows up. He’s 4 years old right now and has plenty of time to change his mind, but I have no doubt he could make it one day, if he wanted to do it.
He was watching this documentary recently and talking about his future plans with his daddy. Craig agreed that it would be a really cool thing to be. He said that when he was little, he wanted to be one when he grew up. Carson looked at him completely perplexed and said “Well, you’re a grown up now...so...”. Craig and I exchanged looks in a chuckle about life. Made me think a lot about my own childhood dreams of being a cartoonist/writer/lawyer/marine biologist/actress/respiratory therapist/performing arts teacher/family counselor/mustang convertible owner when I got big. In fact, I still have dreams because life is always evolving. I’m extremely blessed to be a stay at home mother now, but eventually the boys won’t really need me home all day and I am excited to see what the next part of my life will bring. I never, ever make plans though. God laughs at me enough already.
After Craig’s recently revealed childhood Blue Angels hopes, he actually had planned to be a smoke jumper with the forestry service in Southern California. He started college with that in mind, but the program was really full and taking much longer than planned, so he joined the Coast Guard. When I met him, he was an Aviation Maintenance Technician on the HH-60J Jayhawk helicopter. Coasties are fixers and flyers, so he was also a Flight Mechanic who ran the hoist on Search and Rescue missions. (He rescued rescue swimmers.)
After his career-ending injury in 2005, he went back to work with the Coast Guard as a contractor and started classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He took a technical writing class and it changed his entire career path! Now, he’s a Civil Service Technical Writer Editor for Coast Guard Aviation and loves it so very much! He’s extremely good at what he does because he actually used the maintenance manuals as a mechanic that he now edits. He wouldn’t be able to do this job as well as he does if it wasn’t for his time in the Coast Guard.
I just think it is amazing how God works in our lives to bring us to different things we would never really imagine doing otherwise. I never imagined I’d write newspaper columns. I don’t know what God has in store for our lives, but I’ll be sure to write about it!
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