Pyrrhic victory...

This morning, I got up, got ready, and made my way to the aviation building to fly the local solo flight I had cleared with Darren on Friday. When I got there, Darren was in his office with a student, so I just went to the briefing room and checked the computerized weather info. Then I grabbed some keys and started to head out to preflight my plane. I actually made it outside before I stopped and turned back. I haven't made a landing on my own in about 10 days, so I'm a bit nervous about doing it again on my own until I've had a chance to do it dual. And there was some wind that had me a little uncomfortable. So I hung up my keys, took my name off the board, and went to tell Darren I'd reconsidered. Only Darren wasn't in his office. I hung out for maybe 15 minutes to see if he'd come back, but he didn't. I think he went flying with the student who was in his office when I first got there. If that's the case, then he obviously forgot about dispatching me, which means I wouldn't have been able to fly today, anyhow.

On that note, I got my chance to talk to Belinda today. I told her about my experiences in Darren's class and how those experiences had left me without much faith in Darren's ability to instruct. Then I told her about the X-C on Friday, and how my lack of faith in him had only been reinforced. She just sat listening and shaking her head for a considerable portion of my monologue. At the end, she asked me if I'd noticed her sitting in the back of the room during class on Thursday. I told her I had noticed, and she told me she'd finally had to leave the room because she just couldn't take it anymore. She thanked me for bringing all this to her, because most students would have just tried to muddle through. Muddling through, though, doesn't make the higher-ups aware of problems that need to be dealt with, so she was glad I let her know about Darren. She told me I'd never fly with him again, that she was going to have a talk with him this afternoon, that I was going to go back to being Erin's student, and that I should try to get with Erin later to work out a schedule.

Just as I was about to leave, though, Erin came knocking on Belinda's door, so Belinda let her in and we decided I would just be in Erin's office at 6:45 tomorrow morning. Turns out that Erin's original 6:45 student had decided to switch instructors to free up Erin's schedule a bit, and she'd never bothered to fill the time slot. So not only did I get a new instructor and manage to hold onto the time slot I'm used to, but I'm also Erin's only student at that time, so she'll be able to focus solely on me. Before my chat with Belinda, I couldn't imagine how God would make it all work out, and now I'm completely in awe of how He did work it out.

The only grey spot in all of this (and the reason for the title of this post) is that Darren probably got in some form of trouble for what I told Belinda today. Maybe she gave him a verbal smack-down. More likely, she probably just let him know how unhappy I was and how unhappy she was. I think Darren is a really nice guy. I've probably said that before. He's friendly and funny and personable, and I'd love to be his friend. I don't like thinking I got him in trouble. In fact, it makes me pretty sad. But it had to be done. I don't regret going to Belinda. I tried to be as mature and objective as I could about it. In fact, she commented on how kind I was being, considering the circumstances. But I do regret that it had to come to that, and that an otherwise great guy had to be "talked to" by his boss. As Belinda told me, "Sometimes God uses us to be the fire." And as I told her in reply, "I just hate being the fire."