Fear

June 8, 2011
"The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds' feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]!" Habakkuk 3:19

I should have known when I saw the verse of the day.  I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.  But, I didn't.  I didn't know and I went.  Perhaps it was better NOT knowing.  Less time then to squirm out of it with pitiful excuses and whining.  And believe you me, there would have pitiful excuses.  Maybe not the whining...maybe.  :) 

So here's the story.  I went to a Young Life camp, Frontier Ranch, for a day because I'm new staff and all new staff go to camp for a day in the summer so they can "get" Young Life.  I was super excited.  I was going with a great group of new staffers and having never seen or experienced Young Life in action I was grateful to get the chance.  Our group was assigned two "rides" out of the 5 at Frontier.  Each camp has "rides" for the kids to enjoy.  Frontier Ranch offers horseback riding, repelling, ropes course, go carts (along a ridge), and a ride called "The Screamer" (which a lot of the camps have a version of this ride - it is VERY popular!).  Now if you know me well then you are snickering right now wondering what in the world I got put on.  Well, let the suspense end.  We got assigned the ropes course and the go carts.  I thought, "Okay, no biggie.  I can do a ropes course. Psh." 

It was all good until I got to the ropes course.  PEOPLE.  It was 40 feet, no joke, up in the air!  FORTY FEET.  I lost my "psh" attitude immediately.  It was replaced with this vomitous knot of butterflies that really wanted to get out of my stomach.  Oh dear Lord, I thought, what do I do?  Well here's where God got pretty creative with me.  Another new staffer balked.  I mean was REFUSING to do the course.  And we did have a choice.  We didn't have to but it was strongly suggested.  This new staffer is considerably younger than me (did I really just say that? Oy.) so I, having a heart for women and mentoring and all that stuff, shoved my hesitations about the course to the side and told her she was doing it and I'd be right there with her.  We would do it together.  "But I'm so scared of heights," she says.  "So am I," I reply back, "so that's why we will do it together."  I got pretty firm and didn't let her squirm out of it, which if you notice also placed me right there as well.  This wasn't an optional activity as far as I was concerned.  For her OR for I. 

So we got ourselves all harnessed in (have you ever worn these harness things?  Oy, SO uncomfortable - like a perma wedgie, they are the worst but they keep you safe so vanity flies out the window!) and got situated on the first of 5 sections of the course.  FORTY FEET UP.  FORTY FEET!  And we began.  It was an arduous journey.  For one, the wind was pretty strong that day and forty feet up means you get caught in it.  So here I am scared to death anyway, clutching the ropes and such with a grip that made my hands ache and knuckles white, and then the wind comes along and swings me around a bit.  NOT FUN.  Sections 1 and 2 done and I breathe a bit at section 3 because it's a zip line.  Still terrified me when it actually happened but not like the course to this point.  Section 4 I thought was the easiest.  Okay it wasn't easy but I wasn't as terrified doing it as I have been to this point.  Section 5 was horrible...or so I thought.  At the end of section 5 the only way to get down is to jump.  Yes.  JUMP FORTY FEET DOWN.  Who does this?  Who thinks this is fun?  Who enjoys this torture?  Who is sick enough to think of these things? 

Here's where it got ugly.  :) 

I'm like (just remember I warned you this wasn't pretty and rather ugly), "There is no way in hell I'm jumping 40 feet down.  NO WAY."  Please.  Don't remind me about the safety harness.  Who cares?  FORTY FEET PEOPLE.  So the next 5? 10? (couldn't have been more than 10, or I hope not!) minutes were spent with a variety of people yelling encouraging things at me about jumping FORTY FEET.  My handler at the bottom (a high school student I might add, in fact all of the work crew are high schoolers) yells up at me, "Beth!  It's all good, this line can hold up to 10,000 pounds!"  'Cause that is supposed to make me feel better.  I yelled back, "Oh great!  Now I feel ready to jump!"  By this time my team below was in tears they were laughing so hard.  It was at that moment that I gripped the tree and just sweated.  (Talk about pitting out!)  The high school girl trying to convince me to let go of the tree was forced to pry my fingers off the staple in the tree and in a voice that one uses with crying toddlers she's encouraging me about jumping.  All this time I KNOW I have to jump, I have no choice.  They won't let me do the course backward so the only way to get off the course is to jump off in what they call "the leap of faith".  Indeed.  Faith.  Faith that the safety harness would actually work, that the line rumored to hold up to 10,000 pounds was going to hold me and my weight (which admittedly is not the lowest I've ever been, just sayin'), that the handler knew what she was doing with this crazy 36 year old.  Faith.  Indeed.  There's a trapeze bar that you are supposed to aim for when jumping.  Straight out it's five feet away (I'm about 5'2") and if you arc when you jump then it's about seven feet away.  It looked about a million miles away to me.  My fingers were successfully pried off the tree and I, with my heart in my throat, on the count of 3 jumped.  Sort of.  The new staffer that I did this with?  She jumped, did this beautiful Superman kind of leap through the air and her fingers even brushed the bar. I?  Well.  I...jumped, at least it felt like a jump until I saw the picture.  It doesn't look like a jump or even a leap and I came nowhere near the bar but I was airborne for a few seconds!  I believe I screamed all the way down to the ground and when I landed on the ground I seriously contemplated kissing it.  It actually ran through my mind. 
Then came The Screamer.  (Wait, Beth, what about the go carts?  Yeah we nixed those in favor of this terror filled ride.)  I actually thought at the ropes course that The Screamer would be nothing after leaping 40 feet into the air.  Ha.  And HA again.  The vomitous butterflies had returned and I was instantly regretting the ice cream I had eaten a few minutes prior.  But along with the butterflies was this determination that I was going to do this, even if I looked like a wimp - oh, wait I had already accomplished THAT on the ropes course.  :)  So once again the safety harnesses went on and I found myself standing at a ledge and looking at a drop that was WAY more than 40 feet.  This time I was strapped in to a swing along with two other women and on the count of 3 we all had to step off the ledge at the same exact time with the same foot and away we would go, swinging through the air.  DEAR LORD.  Am I crazy?!?  Terrifying is an understatement.  I don't know that I can come up with an adequate word for this death trap called "fun".  According to my sources the second I stepped off the ledge I squeezed my eyes shut, opened my mouth to emit loud screams, and flung my arms around the bars of the swing and hung on for dear life.  Said sources also said that I didn't stop screaming for at least 2 minutes and that I kept my death grip for the duration of the ride.  I didn't open my eyes until it felt like a normal swing and not like a death swing.  Again, I had people in tears from laughter.  Soooo glad I could provide the comic relief...
Oh but the fun didn't end there.  Once the swing came to a stop, thank you Jesus, we had to be unlatched.  So my two friends are unlatched and slip gracefully out of the swing to the ground.  Me?  Yeah.  The high school boy unlatches me and I start to slip out and find myself caught on something.  But I have slipped too far down to pull myself back into the swing so I'm...stuck.  The only option?  The high school boy has to lift me by my butt to free me.  More hysterics coming from my team.  SIGH.  It's a good thing I haven't had issues with my pride 'cause this would've put me over the edge! 

So, Beth.  What's the point of this story?  I mean it was good for a laugh and we appreciate that you put yourself out there for mocking but you always have a point so...what is it? 
Gosh.  You guys know me SO well.  While I have, by publishing this, opened up the door for mocking (and I do deserve the mocking so you have permission to do so!) I DO also have a deeper purpose in exposing my humiliation.  :) 

We all have a fear of something or someone or both!  And most of us, in my observations, have a fear of more than one thing.  Also according to my observations the only way to eradicate the fear is to confront it head on.  Confront it, show it who is boss, tell it off and replace it with strength.  Fear saps us of our courage, of energy, of our very self in some cases.  And worst of all, fear controls us when WE should be controlling it. 

I have a list of things I know I'm fearful of, things that shouldn't have control over me but do and in ways I don't understand and am trying to confront.  It's not a long list but long enough to be controlled instead of victorious. 

At some point God gives us chances to confront our fears.  Usually our fears present themselves as big looming mountains that feel and look impossible to conquer.  We think, "There's NO way."  But the good news is there IS a way, there is always a way because God shows us the way, he is THE way. No matter what the fear is, it presents itself as this insurmountable obstacle in our life and the only way to confront it is to scale it and reach the summit of it. 

So.  Strap on your gear (I prefer God, a Bible, and a good group of people who are willing to go the distance with me) and put one foot in front of the other and get going.  It will be hard.  It will be downright scary.  It will make you sweat.  It may make you swear.  (Hey let's just be real.)  It will be time consuming.  It will stretch you.  You'll use muscles that you haven't in a while.  You will most likely be out of breath at times.  I'm willing to bet a tear or two will make it's way down your face.  You will have to sacrifice some personal comfort not to mention your pride.  But you CAN and you WILL summit (thereby conquering) the fear if you persevere.  And at the summit you will be able to stake your claim on the fear and declare victory over it.  It might not be the prettiest execution of something, it may get pretty ugly, it may appear ungraceful.  WHO CARES?  The point is to do it, no matter how ugly it looks getting done it still will get done.  Trust me.  It was REALLY ugly as I was confronting my fear of heights.  But I did it and in the end that is all that matters.  God doesn't care how graceful we are in the process, he doesn't care how smooth we look, he ignores the tears and snot that have mingled and dried on our face.  He's just proud when we stand on the summit of our fear and declare victory.  And guess what?  You will be proud too.  In the end you won't care either about your lack of grace, your whimpering, your snot and tears.  TRUST ME. 

Just do it. 

"The Lord God is YOUR Strength, YOUR personal bravery, and YOUR invincible army; He makes YOUR feet like hinds' feet and will make YOU to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon YOUR high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]!" Habakkuk 3:19





Yes.  That is pure terror on my face.
Yes.  I didn't even come close to the bar and I'm okay with that!
(Want to really see the terror?  Click on the picture to enlarge!) 




It appears I prayed all the way down.  :)



Never in my life have I been so happy to be on dirt.  Never I tell you. 




The Screamer. That's me far right with my arms wrapped as tightly as possible around the bar.  What you can't see, or hear, is the screaming that exited my mouth and didn't cease for at least 2 minutes.  Pure terror all over again.