Who is the Pilot?
Author: Audrina Jones Bunton

It was a mild summer day in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina when I boarded United Airline flight 7318 to Washington, DC. Like usual, I promptly located my window seat, with no doubts that the pilots would safely take me to my destination.

Suddenly, as I sat gazing out of the window waiting for take-off, certain questions unfolded in my mind. I wondered, “Who are these pilots that I wholeheartedly entrust with my life?” I wondered about my surety of knowing that they would, or could take me to my destination. I also pondered on “Why it is that I -- or we as individuals, trustingly and unwaveringly allow others to continuously pilot our lives without questions or reservations?”

We permit other people to pilot our lives while we unquestionably find our seat near the window – just watching – watching our lives quickly pass by. We lack faith in ourselves, because too often, we allow other people such as bosses, friends, family and even enemies, to navigate our lives. We allow them to pilot our lives because of their negative words. We allow them to pilot our lives because they claim to know what is best for us. We live on autopilot without a clue as to where we are headed, or how we will get there.

We must declare that we will no longer allow others to take control of our lives – or of our future. No matter how cloudy things look, no matter how dark our past is, we must remember that God is in control. Allow God to be your pilot -- as you co-pilot your own life into a prosperous and promising future.

Declare: I will no longer sit back and allow others to control my life into an uncertain and discontented future. The past is behind me, and only the best is yet to come!

Copyright © 2003






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Motivational Speaker, Audrina Jones Bunton was born the seventh of eight children in her household in Pinehurst, North Carolina into a loving and committed Christian home. As she has 2 children, over 40 nieces and nephews and great- nieces and nephews, it is not unusual to find her under the same roof with many of her maternal five-generation family on weekends and on holidays. In her youth, she fondly recalls traveling throughout the U.S. with her family, as her parents ministered from state to state year after year—helping people as they traveled. A graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a Bachelor's degree in Sociology, Audrina is a Competent Toastmaster of Toastmasters International and serves as the North Carolina District Sergeant At Arms. She is a former counselor of the Durham Pregnancy Support Services, a Christian-oriented crisis pregnancy center in Durham, North Carolina and is currently a Social Research Assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Audrina serves as the Youth Director at the Come As You Are Evangelistic Center in Aberdeen, North Carolina.

Modeling after a song that her mother so often sings, and one that Martin Luther King, Jr. often quoted, her life and speeches are based on the following lyrics, “If I can help somebody as I pass along, If I can cheer somebody with a word or song, If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, Then my living will not be in vain.”

Audrina resides with her husband William, and 2 children, Audrina Lorraine and William Woodrow.

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