A Soldier's Heart

Travis Shocks Me (Dave)

Travis had decided to wait a year before going to university. He wanted to get his pilot's license first. I don't know why it was so important to him, but in a way it didn't surprise me. Everything he ever set out to do, he set out to do with mastery, and flying was no exception.

He took me up once, in the back seat, as he needed to have an instructor in the front with him until he got his license. He handled that bird so gently it was like riding in a Cadillac. When he brought us down, the wheels kissed the ground so lightly it was barely noticeable.

"Are you thinking of getting a commercial pilot's license later?" I asked him, after we climbed out of the plane and were walking toward the terminus.

"Probably not, Dad. I like flying, but I don't think I'd want to do it for a living. I want it to always feel like it does now, like I'm leaving Earth and its problems behind and feeling infinity stretching out round me."

I smiled at him. "Some pilot once called it touching the face of God."

"Something like that." His face changed, the peaceful look replaced by bitterness. "Except I'm not sure I believe in God any more."

I was stunned. Of all the things he could have said, that shocked me the most.

"Why not, son?"

"Because he lets really bad things happen, that we can't do anything about."

"He lets us choose."

Travis stopped dead in his tracks. "Choose? It's like tying someone up, blindfolding and gagging them, and telling them to choose which way to get out of a room where a fire is raging. Sure, we can choose, but our choices don't help us get out."

His voice became less strained as he resumed walking. "When I was a kid, and you told me God was a beneficent father, I thought he was someone like you, up in the sky, watching over us. You never struck me, you always explained the consequences of different actions, and then you let me choose. God doesn't do that. He tells us do this and don't do that, and we have no idea of what will happen as a result of our choices. And then he hurts us in ways we never expected."

"I think our Lord felt the same way, when he asked why God had deserted him, the night before his crucifixion. A horrible death was given him, yet at the end he rose from it."

Travis didn't answer. I didn't think I was getting through to him. I wished I had never broached the subject. I wished I could give him back the peace he had had moments before. There was only One who could do that, and I prayed fervently that night that He would lead my son back into the fold.