Dear friends,
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of heights. Terrified is probably the more accurate word.
I’ve always loved being in water and swimming. Pools, rivers, lakes, oceans — these are my happy places. But I was the kid who’d climb up the diving board and then freeze at the top. The short fall between the board and the water scared me to death.
My fear of heights has traveled with me on land across the decades. On the first anniversary of my dad’s death in April, Lily and I went for a long hike at Starved Rock State Park. We walked through the lush forest with birdsong ringing in every direction. At last, we arrived at the top of Wildcat Canyon. A solid deck with a sturdy railing invited us to look out over the edge into this wondrous hole in the earth. But simply inching up to the railing and taking a picture to view at a safe distance made my body tense up and tremble.
Free Fall
On Saturday, I faced my fear of heights head on. But there’s a backstory that I need to tell first.
For years, I lived with the fear of my parents dying. Something inside told me that if – when – one of my parents died, I wouldn’t be able to handle it, that I’d be frozen like that little boy on the diving board.
But my dad died fourteen months ago. And I survived. Yes, I’ve missed him dearly every day since. But his death has taught me that my deep fear was lying to me. Death is a door, and dad is safe. I’m still here and living my life, even as I feel the sadness and move at a slower pace.
After dad died, I started wondering what other fears might be lying to me and holding me captive with their ominous threats of helpless disaster. My fear of heights quickly came to mind.
In response, I told some friends that I wanted to go skydiving. I saw it as a full-bodied, spiritual exercise of facing one of my oldest, most visceral fears. I wanted to live into a wider freedom.
When my friend Grant read my email back in January, he generously invited me to go skydiving on June 14th. At the time, I don’t think either of us realized that would be Father’s Day weekend. But when the day arrived, the timing was poignant for me. Tears seeped out of my eyes as we drove to the Chicago Skydiving Center out in the cornfields of Illinois.
The weather was overcast, and we had to wait for the sky to clear. But soon enough, we heard our names over the loudspeaker. Our instructors strapped harnesses to our bodies. Then we packed into a tiny blue plane playfully named Fly the Whale. The propellor whirled, and we started ascending 14,000 feet into the sky.
On the flight up, our instructors, Nacho and Stephen, cracked jokes to lighten the mood. “Parachute? I thought they said to wear a pair of shoes!” Stephen also talked with me about my dad.
But soon enough, the thin plastic door rolled back, and the wind roared in. It was on.
Jesse jumped.
Then Jenny jumped.
And then it was my turn. Seemingly alluding to Scripture, Stephen told me, “Alright, Andrew: where you go, I go; and where I go, you go.” Our bodies were tethered tightly to one another.
Stephen and I shuffled to the edge of the plane’s open door and paused to look down nearly three miles. Vast farm fields looked appeared small squares on a green-and-gold quilt. Winding rivers squiggled across the landscape. Wisps of cloud floated below.
Then we jumped.
It was pure free fall. Nothing between my body and the earth except thin air.
I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life. For the first few seconds, I felt absolute terror. I had literally fallen into something that I couldn’t reverse and had zero control over. I was helpless, and the only way out was down. My stomach plunged into my throat, and I screamed as my body rocketed head-first toward the earth at 120 miles per hour.
But then I relaxed into the fall and I felt the purest freedom. A smile filled my face. I beheld the beauty of God’s creation like never before as a rainbow glowed beneath us. I stretched my arms wide open like a bird and felt oneness with everything.
Just like that, my fear of heights fell off my body. I thought of my dad and cried and laughed with longing and joy. I felt like I was a little closer to him in heaven, falling upward into the love of God and learning to fly.
Before our jump, Lily texted me this blessing: “Today the wind carries you on its wings. May the wind whisper peace to your heart, and may you land more alive, more free, more you.” Her poetic words articulated exactly what I experienced.
Help Falling
The night before, I looked into the mirror as I shaved my face and asked myself questions: “You struggle to jump off a diving board a few feet above water; then you commit to jump out of an airplane 14,000 feet above the earth? How did you decide to do this?”
I was genuinely curious. After a moment, two things surfaced in my heart. I noticed how, in tandem, they encouraged me to face my fear of heights and consciously decide to step beyond it into a new freedom.
Perhaps both can teach us something about the life of faith. They connect to the liberating power of how Jesus understood God as our loving Father.
Safety
Anticipating this free fall was frightening to me. In the days leading up to it, I felt more anxiety than excitement. I was especially nervous about the moment when the plane door would open and we would voluntarily move our bodies to the edge — peering out over an aerial abyss. Like the diving board, I wondered if I would freeze and refuse to jump. (In skydiving world, there’s a name for these people: “refusers.”) Just visualizing this moment in my imagination sent butterflies swirling in my nervous system.
Still, I believed I could overcome my intense feeling of fear and jump out of the airplane because I trusted that I would actually be safe. The crew leading the jump is experienced and knows what they’re doing. Countless people have done this before me and survived. Skydiving wouldn’t be legal it were that dangerous. As Grant said on the way there, “Driving to the center is more dangerous than skydiving itself.”
Of course, our heads and hearts live in a complex relationship with one another. The fearful part of me told me that skydiving is insane and that I should back out. But a more grounded part of me could trust that there was a new freedom on the other side of that open airplane door.
And my trust was telling the truth: when I allowed myself to breathe and be present, I was safe to let go of my fear and literally free fall. Seconds later, my terror fell off into an experience of freedom unlike any I’ve ever had before. In that moment, it was like nothing was frightening and no fear could ever possess me again. Rather than an abyss, I plunged into an aerial baptism of presence, peace, eternity now.
This is how Jesus understood our entire existence with God. He taught that God is our Father and that we are always safe in God’s loving care. Of course, on our earthly journey, we often feel the opposite. We experience intense anxiety and fear – about whether we’ll have enough, about whether we’ll be okay, about whether we can endure to the end and what will happen after that. Eventually, each one of us will exit the airplane door of life and free fall into the mystery of death.
But this is what Jesus said:
“I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-27)
In this sermon at the start of his public movement, Jesus names some of our core fears: poverty, grief, insecurity, and death. And then he reassures us: we are safe because God is our Father. No matter what happens, God values us and will take care of us.
With this faith, Jesus calls us to step through our fear and into the freedom of being alive, here and now, come what may.
Togetherness
Back to the mirror shaving my face the night before jump day. I noticed that I wasn’t able to overcome my fear of falling simply because I trusted that I would be safe, which felt a little abstract. I also knew that I wouldn’t be alone in my fear.
This solidarity was huge for me. When I thought about soaring thousands of feet up into the sky, jumping out, and then plunging face-first to the earth, I knew that my friend Grant would be there with me.
My friendship with Grant took off on an airplane in Ethiopia eleven years ago. At the time, I was leading a program called “Authority, Action, Ethics: Ethiopia” at Wheaton College. We weren’t skydiving; but we were learning to step out of our own limiting cultural perspectives and to practice a liberating posture of attentive presence, listening, and learning with others in their culture. Grant and I talked honestly from our hearts on that trip, and trust started thickening between us.
That was the seed of me asking Grant to serve on the board of my small organization, the Institute for Faith and Flourishing. And for years now, I’ve seen again and again that Grant loves me and is deeply committed to my wellbeing. When I mentioned my desire to skydive, Grant immediately replied, “I would totally go skydiving with you in 2025 if you want (no pressure :)”
So, when I visualized being up in the airplane and feeling afraid – feeling terrified, maybe frozen and tempted to become a refuser – I knew that someone who loves me would be with me. Grant would be right there beside me and witnessing me. That trusted presence in my fear encouraged me – gave me comfort and courage – that I could overcome my fear.
And, again, that’s exactly what happened. Grant and I drove together to the Chicago Skydiving Center and spent the hour talking openly about our core fears. We talked about a fear of heights, of failure, of letting others down, of being rejected and loved ones dying. Rather than hiding from our fears or pretending like we’re invulnerable supermen, we shared vulnerability and opened our hearts to one another.
When we finally squeezed into that tiny airplane and sat side-by-side until its small door rolled back and the air roared in, we were just doing in the air with our bodies what we had already done on the ground with our souls. Grant gave me a first bump and witnessed me plunge out the door as my fear was blown away. Then he soared behind me and landed soon after I glided back to terra firma.
I notice the encouraging power of presence in Jesus’ vision of God as our Father. At the end of his earthly journey, Jesus faced his own far-more-radical flight, open door, and free fall into thin air. He knew that he was about to be arrested, tortured, and murdered for the way he lived and loved. In fact, Jesus anticipated being abandoned by his closest friends.
But notice what Jesus says to his friends in that tense moment before free fall:
“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.” (John 16:32)
Jesus courageously names his fear – “me all alone.” But with his next breath, he also names his faith: “Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”
Jesus had internalized the trust that he was never truly alone. Yes, he was facing the terrifying moment of being pushed out of the plane of life by violent power. Jesus wept, sweat blood in the garden, and asked, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” He was emotionally honest and present to his pain. But after processing his anguish, Jesus trusted to the end that his heavenly Father was with him. With his final breaths, he confessed, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Thus Jesus fell through the door of death into the everlasting freedom of resurrection life.
Fall into Freedom
After five eternity-like minutes of parachuting down to the beauty of earth, Stephen and I landed back on solid ground. While I waited for Grant, I talked with a fellow skydiver about what we had just experienced.
Jesse told me that he was a thrill-seeker. But he said that cliff jumping in Puerto Rico didn’t compare with what we had just done in the sky. At the mention of “cliff jumping,” my mind immediately relocated to Wildcat Canyon. I instinctively thought to myself, “I could never do that!”
But then I interrupted that old, limiting story in my head and remembered: I literally just did what Jesse did. I jumped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet in the sky and landed safely on earth.
I thought to myself with a smile, “Maybe I could actually cliff jump now.”
(The next day on Father’s Day, I was booked to do a “tree tops” course with some friends from a local church where I teach. As we climbed tall trees, crossed tight-rope-like bridges, and zip-lined through the forest, I was pleasantly surprised: I felt no fear.)
On the drive home, I couldn’t stop laughing with Grant and saying, “Wow!” I was in awe of what we had just experienced together. Looking up at the sky felt new and like I could see it from a new perspective. We had just flown up there, voluntarily fallen down, and exchanged fear for freedom. I told Grant that it felt like a miracle and that I wished everyone could experience this all-encompassing sense of freedom.
Then another thought occurred to me: what if I had said no to Grant when he invited me to skydive back in January? As I savored this sacred moment, I realized how sad it would have been if I had allowed my fear to control and keep me from having one of the fullest experiences of freedom I can imagine.
Then my contemplation of fear and freedom expanded far beyond skydiving and my mind went to the Southside of Chicago.
The Wisdom of Elders
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Tom McDowell, an 85-year-old African American man who attends the church I went zip-lining with. Tom told me about his experience of serving in the Civil Rights Movement almost sixty years ago. He talked about how six white men had lynched his grandfather, Rev. Isaac Simmons, in 1944 down in Mississippi. About being pistol-whipped in the face by a police officer as a young man when he became a driver in the Freedom Rides. About being jailed with Dr. King’s friend Ralph Abernathy in Washington, D.C. soon after King was assassinated in 1968.
Tom’s stories were fierce and not easy to hear. But he recalled the high price he paid in the struggle for civil rights in America with an unmistakable sense of freedom. There wasn’t a hint of regret in his voice. His eyes were shining – and then closed with affection as he cuddled with his beloved wife Sandy. (In 1944 when Tom’s grandfather was lynched and my father was born, their “interracial” marriage would have been illegal in over half the United States. Lily and I have thanked them for helping pave the path for marriages like ours.)
But there was another man sitting at the table with us that afternoon. He was a little older than Tom and also grew up under segregation in the South. As he listened to Tom tell his story, he briefly interjected. He said, “I wasn’t in the movement like I should have been.” The regret in his voice was haunting.
Listening to these two elders reflect back on their decisions almost six decades ago filled me with reverence and fueled my desire to live in freedom. One described choosing a path of struggle for human dignity that led to being physically beaten, arrested, and jailed. But he remembered his suffering with unburdened freedom. The other man had stayed out of the struggle and avoided this suffering. But he remembered his safety with weighty regret.
Fear is an incredibly powerful force. It can trap us and imprison our lives. In the moment, it promises to keep us safe and protect what we consider precious. But in retrospect, we can see how fear shrinks our horizons and impoverishes our humanity.
As I cherish my dad after Father’s Day and celebrate Juneteenth today, I want to live more deeply into freedom – to choose a life of truth, love, and justice for all of us. Jesus’ liberating vision of God as our Father shows us the way. We are always safe, even when we’re called to make decisions that feel anything but safe. And when our fear flares and tries to paralyze us, God is still with us – right beside us, like Grant with me in that tiny airplane. The very worst can happen to us, even death itself, and we’re still safe because God is our loving Parent and with us to the end.
Skydiving isn’t for everyone. But I pray that each of us can make courageous choices to face and even befriend our fears. On the other side of that open door roaring with the terror of falling, there’s a new freedom that enables us to fly.
P.S. Watch short videos of my skydive here 🙂
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