I grew up around military bases. My father was an Air Force pilot. I followed him into the cockpit. By thirty-five, I was a seasoned F-16 pilot with two combat tours and a philosophy that did not include God. I was rational. Trained. Self-sufficient. I did not need anything I could not see or touch.
The Training Mission
We were running a high-altitude combat simulation. Four jets, two aggressors, two defenders. Standard stuff. I had flown it a hundred times. My jet was solid. My wingman was sharp. The weather was clear.
Somewhere around fifteen minutes into the exercise, my instruments went dark. Not gradually. All at once. Hydraulics, electrical, everything. A complete systems failure.
The Descent
At 35,000 feet, a dead F-16 is not a glider. It is a very fast falling object. I went through the checklist. Nothing. I reset. Nothing. I ran the emergency procedures. The jet was not responding to anything. I was looking at an ejection.
But below me was a populated area. Fort Carson. Hospitals. Schools. Neighborhoods. Ejecting meant the jet would come down somewhere. I did not want that landing on a hospital.
The Prayer
I had maybe ninety seconds to make a choice. Eject and pray the jet misses people, or try to fly a dead jet to a military airfield. I made my hands work. I reached for options I had never had to use. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I said something I had never said in my life:
"God, if you are there, I need you right now."
The Control
The moment I said it, I got control. Not a little control. Not intermittent control. Full, responsive control. The jet responded like I had never seen a jet respond in that condition. I could feel her. I could fly her.
The instruments came back. The systems restarted. I had enough hydraulic pressure to make it to the nearest airfield. Not Colorado Springs. Not Cheyenne. I had to nurse that jet another hundred and fifty miles east to make a runway I could land on safely.
The Landing
I landed that jet with the hydraulics at forty percent and electrical systems at minimal. Every second of that descent, I knew I was flying something that should not be flying. Every second, I felt hands on the controls that were not my hands.
When I touched down, I was shaking so hard I almost crashed in the landing zone.
The After
The Air Force investigated. The jet had a catastrophic system failure. Electrical and hydraulic failure simultaneously. According to the manual, that failure requires a controlled ejection. No exceptions. But I had flown it. I had landed it. I had brought her down on a runway.
The engineers could not explain it. They said: "Your flying was perfect. Your instincts were perfect. But the physics says this jet should have been unflyable. We do not know how you maintained control."
I knew. I was not alone up there.
The Change
I went to church the following Sunday. I did not know how. I walked in. I listened. I wept. And I gave my life to God in a pew while a pastor talked about the God who speaks in the still, small voice. Mine had spoken in the roar of an engine failure.
What This Means for You
God does not only work through quiet moments and comfort. Sometimes He speaks loudest in crisis. Sometimes He shows up when you are about to lose everything. And sometimes, when you have nowhere else to turn, you find that He was the only place to turn all along.
