When I was in college I took classes in Outdoor Leadership, which included developing skills in both technical areas and in leading individuals and teams toward outcomes. One day our class was learning about how to properly set rope anchors for rock climbing. Obviously, it’s very important that your equipment catches you if you fall off a rock face, so our instructor was teaching us how to secure the safety rope to a number of anchors we had established at the top of the cliff.
The instructor, Kevin,
demonstrated a variety of ways to attach safety equipment to boulders and trees
at the top. He made a point to emphasize that we’d need to establish three
solid anchors before being able to proceed. “That way, if one of them
fails, you’ve still got two. Even if two of them fail, you’ll still have one
more.”
Of course, someone
asked the question. “What if this one goes, that one fails, and the other
one goes, too?”
Kevin looked at him, confused.
“You mean if all three of them
fail?”
“Yeah.”
“Then God wants
you dead.”
When you have a God-given
task laid out in front of you, it’s certainly a good thing to spend time planning
and preparing, but there comes a point where you’re prepared enough and it’s
time to get moving. Kevin didn’t want us to establish four anchors, or five.
Three was enough. The chances of all three anchors failing was so low that
setting more of them would have been a waste of time. If we spent time focusing
on more than three, that time took away from our actual reason for showing up
at the cliff that day.
It’s possible to take
so many safety precautions that it becomes too cumbersome to do anything. There
comes a point at which you are suitably prepared, reasonable precautions have
been taken, and you’re ready to leave the comfortable behind. The only thing
that remains is for you to take action.
By all means plan
effectively. Expect problems and make backup plans if necessary, but don’t let
perpetual planning stop you from getting started. If all the necessary pieces
are in place, it might be that you
are the only thing holding you back. What are you waiting for?
By the start of senior
year of college, most students are thinking about their last classes and life
beyond their degree. I was thinking about it being my last year to take
advantage of all the institution’s adventure sports programs.
I was into kayaking and
whitewater rafting at the time. Coming back to college at the end of summer
meant that the water in the local creeks and river was still warm. For
kayaking, that was nice, but it was also the time of year where the flow rate
was the lowest, so a lot of creeks and rivers were either too low or too slow
to be enjoyable. Thankfully, we had a solution for that.
Not far from the
college was a man-made lake with a concrete dam. The lake provided summer
boating opportunities for visitors and residents. Every year, about this time
in September, the dam operator dropped the lake’s water level roughly 10-15
feet to kill most of the shallow water algae over the winter. That way the
water in these areas the following spring and summer would stay clear of
excessive plant growth.
The faculty adviser for
the college’s paddle sports club, a guy named Tim, was in touch with the dam
operator. The operator was pretty cool about releasing the water in a time and
manner that Tim would request. If we wanted a longer, sustained flow, this guy
would accommodate us. If we wanted a bigger, shorter burst, he’d make it
happen. The two would agree on a schedule for when the release would begin, and
prior to that date’s arrival, Tim and a few other people would walk down
through the creek bed with chainsaws to clear potential obstacles. It was a custom-ordered
whitewater run!
I had only become
interested in kayaking the previous academic year. I’m not sure why, but I got
it into my head that I wanted to go over a drop in a kayak. A drop is just like
it sounds…it’s a sudden change in the elevation of the creek/river bed. It
could be a shelf that spans the whole width of the body of water you’re going
down, or maybe a formation where one side of the river has a big drop while the
other side has a more gradual slope. As it turns out, this run had a drop of
probably 4-5 feet right at the beginning…great for a first-time drop. When I
got the invite, this is the feature that sold me.
The day arrived and I
met up with a few other guys. One of them, a maintenance guy at the college,
was named Charlie. Charlie’s hobbies included woodworking and generally
“MacGyvering” things. He carved his own wooden kayak paddle. He also
fashioned a wooden bumper for his car when it needed to be replaced. His family
hosted a number of us for dinner once, and his kids showed off a system of pulleys
that allowed them to raise or lower their beds depending on whether they wanted
more floor space or to go to bed. Charlie was going to walk me through my first
drop.
We drove to the lake, geared up, and carried our boats down to the creek. We put in just downstream of the spillway, and the drop wasn’t far beyond. Charlie had walked me through the process a bit, laying out the mechanics of what needed to happen and the order in which they needed to happen. Much like I had learned years before, it was important to not reduce speed as you approach the drop.
Charlie was going to be
the first to do the drop, so I could see where to do it and how to approach it.
He worked out a signal with me before he went over the edge. A drop of 4 or 5
feet isn’t that much, but when you’re sitting in a boat that’s barely on top of
the water, your eyes are only about two feet off the surface, so it looked much
higher. After Charlie went over the edge, I wouldn’t be able to see him. Once
he was safely down and he was ready for me to proceed, he’d stick his paddle up
in the air and wave it back and forth, and that would be my “green light.”
Deciding that we were
both ready, he went for it. He started paddling and kept going, right up until
the bow of his boat dropped, his stern popped up out of the water, and he
disappeared over the edge. A few seconds followed, and then I saw one end of a hand-carved
wooden paddle stick up in the air and start waving around. It was my turn.
I went for it. I
started paddling, and got faster as I neared the shelf. As I slid over the
ledge, my boat’s bow dipped and for a fraction of a second I was in midair. The
bow then sliced deep into the water before the kayak’s buoyancy bounced it back
up to the surface. It was easier than I thought, and it was cool!
The thing that made this
part of the adventure so easy was that I had someone right there to walk me
through it. It was someone who had been through it before, who knew what to
expect, and was physically right there to help me in case I got into a jam. In
this situation, Charlie mentored me through the challenge successfully, and it
was much different than if I had been there by myself and decided to try it and
see what happened.
How about you? Do you
have a mentor that can help guide you through a situation that’s foreign and
scary to you? This life is full of unknowns, but it’s also full of people with
lots of experience that you don’t have. Don’t be afraid of taking a shortcut to
spare yourself some painful lessons by learning from others’ hard-won
experience.
Maybe you’re more like
Charlie. You’ve been around the block a few times. You see someone who’s
enthusiastic but inexperienced, and it looks like they’re in an awfully big
hurry to get themselves hurt or stuck in a bad situation. Why not see if
they’re willing to allow you to help channel that enthusiasm into something
productive? Don’t do it because you think it’ll make you look good; do it
because you can help them.
There was a lake not
too far away from the college I attended. Some of the college’s classes either
took place on the lake or took field trips here. I did some canoeing on the
lake for one of the Outdoor Leadership Training courses. The college offered waterskiing
during the first half of the fall semester, too.
I don’t remember what
course it was; it must have been some kind of Biology or Ecology class that
brought us to the Lake one September day. Our class was going to use the same
speedboat that the college used for waterskiing to go out into the lake and take
water samples at various depths.
There were too many
students in the class to bring out in the boat all at once, so we split into
two or three groups that took turns heading out to the middle of the lake. The
driver, a student named Laura, spent a few minutes driving out to deeper water,
a few minutes taking samples, a few minutes joyriding, and a few minutes
heading back to the dock to switch out students.
I was in the last group
of students to head out on the lake. In order to make room for more students,
the professor stayed behind on the dock while the rest of us rode off to the
middle of the lake. As we sped along, I looked around the boat. It was very
similar to the one I had driven for a few summers and had enjoyed going
kneeboarding behind. As providence would have it, on the floor of the boat sat
a lifejacket, a kneeboard, and a ski rope.
We started collecting
our samples or doing whatever experiments we were supposed to do. I wanted to
say something about wanting to give kneeboarding a try, but thought it would be
too crazy. As we wrapped up our tasks on the lake, I couldn’t help myself any
longer. I forget how I did it, but I asked Laura if she’d be open to letting me
jump in the lake to go kneeboarding. To my great surprise, she said
“sure.”
I didn’t ask any other
questions. I lost the shirt/shoes/socks, emptied my pockets, donned the life
jacket, grabbed the board and rope, and jumped into the water. It was cold, but
I didn’t care. We got lined up, Laura hit it, and we were off to the races. The
water was a lot choppier from the wind than I was used to, but I was kneeboardingin a science class.
We were far enough away
from the dock, or maybe around a bend in the lake so that the professor and my
classmates on land couldn’t see us. We didn’t want to goof off too long and get
in trouble, so after a bit of tooling around, Laura stopped the boat and I
climbed back in. We stowed everything and headed back to shore. Come to think
of it, I don’t think anyone on shore even knew what we’d done.
There will be key moments in your life where you only
have a single opportunity to seize the chance to do something you want to do. There’ll
be times when it simply will not happen unless you step out and make it happen.
If you hem and haw, you’ll be stuck watching as the opportunity passes you by.
You might have to
abandon the norms you’re accustomed to. I didn’t even have swim trunks, but
when Laura said she was open to my request, I was in the water with no
questions asked, wearing whatever clothes I already had on.
Many times in this blog
I’ve written that God will place opportunities in your path to do something
great. I’ll use this post to clarify: He will place the opportunity for you to
do something great just off your path.
God loves the timid, but He also has a special place in His heart for the bold.
If there’s something big, bold, and brash that you feel called to do on Christ’s behalf…don’t sit on it. God might bring an opportunity near your orbit, but you’re going to have to pursue that chance…you’ll need to run after it and chase it down. If you feel called to make it happen, live with abandon. You might even have to jump into the cold water with your regular clothes on.
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I don’t remember if I was 16 or 17 but I worked as a lifeguard a few of my teenaged summers. The Christian conference center where I worked was always very busy in the summer time, so when I wasn’t doing lifeguard or pool stuff, I usually had some other type of work to do.
One morning I sat in an
office near the conference center’s front desk, doing data entry for some
upcoming summer programs. I heard someone come running in the front door, and breathlessly
told the front desk attendant, Kari, that there had been an accident down on
the river. On the other side of the Delaware River, right across from us, there
was a rope swing. Apparently a pair of guys that had been paddling down the
river stopped to play around on the rope, but the rope snapped on one of them while
they were mid-swing. According to the guy who came running in, his buddy was
conscious, but couldn’t get up. Since there were some people hanging out on the
conference center’s dock, the uninjured guy saw them and paddled over to ask
for help.
Kari called an
ambulance to get them rolling, then came back to where I was. She asked if I
could just go see if there was anything I could do to help or if there was
anything I could find out.
As I ran across the street
and arrived down at the dock, the guy in the boat was just paddling away in his
boat, heading back over to his buddy. I asked the people on the dock what was going
on, and got the same info I already had. It sounded like the guy in the boat
was super panicky, and it wasn’t clear if the injured guy had a hurt ankle or a
hurt back. There were no other boats around. A canoe would have been absolutely
fantastic at that point, and the conference center’s ski boat would have been
even better, but the waterfront equipment wasn’t going to be set out for the
day for another half hour or so.
I didn’t know how long
it would be before the ambulance arrived. I looked across the river to where
the guy was still laying in the water. That was too far to swim. Well…maybe?
It was, right? I had never
tried it, but that didn’t mean it was too far. I’d been swimming laps in
the pool; in fact I swam hundreds of yards most weeks, but I never went more
than 25 yards without touching a wall. This was probably only four or five pool
lengths. The guy over there might have a broken back, and if his buddy did
anything crazy, it could have a lasting impact. Before I knew it, I ran up to
the pool and grabbed a big red rescue tube, then ran back down to the river. I
was already wearing swim trunks; I kicked off my shoes and took off my shirt. I
put the rescue tube’s strap across my chest and waded into the water to start
swimming across the river.
No big deal, right? It
was the same thing that I did in the pool. Everything went fine at first. I
swam with purpose, I was confident I could do it, and the adrenaline gave me a
boost. I had swum hundreds of laps in the pool, so I knew to lay as
horizontally in the water as possible, even though it felt unnatural, so I
could streamline my body and reduce the effort I’d need to expend.
But that was in a nice
clear pool, with goggles. There were no lines on the floor here telling me I
was going in the right direction. I had to keep picking my head up to check
where I was, where my destination was, how fast the current was taking me, and
if there were any boats coming. Picking my head up meant my body was more
slanted in the water, so I had to work harder to go the same distance. Without
goggles, the water kept getting in my eyes and I had to squint or miss half a
stroke to wipe my eyes to see again. My feet kept kicking the rescue tube or
the strap it was attached to, so I had to modify my kick. The adrenaline burned
off, and I was in the middle of the river, getting tired and starting to doubt
myself.
I ended up switching
strokes for awhile. I didn’t move very fast, but it helped me rest enough to
resume my previous stroke. After what seemed like forever, I made it to the
other side. I was glad when my feet touched land again and I was able to walk up
out of the water to find out what was going on.
It turns out the guy
hadn’t broken his back or anything quite so severe, but his leg was probably
broken. The river bank was too steep to get him up to the top, especially since
he was a bigger guy and I didn’t have any shoes. The rope swing was on the back
edge of a field. Any emergency vehicles were probably going to have a rough
time finding the dirt road that led to us. I sent the injured guy’s buddy out
to the main road to help the ambulance find us, while I stayed with busted-leg
guy.
The emergency folks
didn’t have all the information they would have liked, so they activated the
swift-water rescue team. Now, my hat’s off to volunteer paramedics and river
rescue folks, because they never know what they’re going to deal with when they
show up to a call. I have to say, though, I was a little amused when a guy in a
life jacket, wetsuit, and a helmet tossed a throw-bag (a rope with a weighted
end) near us as I sat on the shore of a gently flowing river, wearing only swim
trunks, while the water gently lapped our feet.
They got the guy out
and loaded him into the ambulance. They patched him up, and I don’t know what
happened, but I’m sure he was fine after a few weeks on crutches. Thankfully by
the time they were driving off our waterfront equipment was getting set out,
and of all people, my dad came idling up to me in the conference center’s ski boat
to give me a ride home. I was glad I didn’t have to swim back.
What a crazy story. Where
in the world am I going with this? I have three things to elaborate on:
First, no matter who
you are, daunting tasks lay before you. Whether it’s the struggle to make it
through yet another mundane day or fighting against something that threatens to
annihilate your way of life, the choice to either stand on the sidelines and
watch or step forward to get your feet wet is up to you. The road will be hard,
but things God placed in your pathway previously have helped equip you for the
journey.
Secondly, you don’t
have to have all the answers in order to be helpful. I was afraid this guy fell
off a rope swing and broke his back and that I was going to have to deal with
some crazy complicated scenario. I wasn’t an EMT, I was just a teenaged
lifeguard that was trained in CPR and first aid. I don’t think I even had a
driver’s license yet. If the guy had been in real bad shape, the only thing I
had with me was a glorified pool float. I knew more than either of those two
other guys did, though. I may not have done anything to save the day, but by
deciding to wade into the river, I kept things from getting worse. We’ve all
been there. Maybe you see something at work or at church where you know it’s
not going to end well, despite the best intentions of the people involved. If
you see something they don’t, even if you’re not the expert, consider offering
some insight that can keep things from getting worse.
Finally, when God made
you, He broke the mold. While we’re all made in His image, you’re not like
anybody else on Earth. Think about the things that come naturally to you…the
combination of talents, interests, and traits that are unique to you. We’ll
call that unique combination your X factor. In this day and age there is an
urgent need for people to make use of the X factors God gave them. There is
nobody else in the world that possesses the exact same X factor you do. You
might be thinking something like “but you don’t understand…I don’t have a
position of authority…I don’t even talk with that many people…I’m a nobody.”
Let me tell you something: the Bible is full of “nobodys” that chose to get out
of the way and let God put their X factor to good use.
Many, if not all, of us have been given opportunities…opportunities to do whatever it is that we’re best at. It’s one of the greatest gifts a person can receive: a chance to do what you were made to do. Incredibly, many of us put it off. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” or even “next week.” What kind of arrogance is it we have when we assume “the same opportunity God is giving me right now will still be there in the morning”? The only thing you have for sure is right now. If God’s been nudging you to do something, what are you waiting for? It’s time to do it right now. Call that person right now. Stop delaying and set your idea in motion right now. Get it done right now. Wade into the water…right now.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. -Philippians 4:13
If you look close, you can see the rope that I’m hooked into, going across the creek
I went to college in
western New York, where there are tons of creeks, rivers, and waterfalls. We
had a series of waterfalls on a creek not far from our school, and it was a
great place to go just for the sake of appreciating the outdoors. It was fun to
go swimming there at the start of the school year in August or September, but
it was such a nice place that we came up with other stuff to do there that didn’t
involve swimming.
I had some
rock-climbing ropes and gear, and we decided to try to make a zipline across
the creek. It would be so cool to stand at the top of one of the falls and jump
off, then go sliding along the rope across the creek in front of the waterfall.
As it turns out, I only
had enough gear to tease us into thinking it was possible. I was able to make
anchors on both sides of the creek, but we couldn’t get the rope tight enough.
If I had jumped off the ledge, I would’ve started zipping across the creek,
only to have my weight make the rope sag, and I would’ve slid right into the
water.
It wasn’t a bad idea to
try out, but it wasn’t feasible with the equipment I had on hand. If the rope was
longer, I could’ve anchored it higher on the uphill side and increased the
descent slope. Alternatively, if I had some ascenders, we could’ve pulled the
rope tighter and had less of a problem with sag. Either way, I likely would’ve
ended up in the water anyway.
I don’t share this story with you because the outing was a resounding success. In fact, at the end of the day, I didn’t have a whole lot to show for it, other than these pictures. This near-adventure, however, added to an expanding pool of experience from which I could draw during future adventures. As the saying goes, “good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.”
Some of you might be
hesitant to give something a try, even if it’s something you’d ultimately like
to do. Don’t let your fear of failure hold you back. Even if you’re not completely
successful, it could add to your knowledge base for the next trial.
“I have not failed. I’ve
just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison, on making the first
electric light bulb
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Imagine you’re lost in
a jungle, starving, scared, and dirty. Hunger is ever present, and food is all
you can think about. Then you see a lizard that you’re pretty confident you can
catch.
Right now your stomach
might turn a little bit, but if you’re in that situation you might start
drooling. What makes the difference?
Part of it is the fact
that you’re probably not desperate for food right now. Another part of it might
be how squeamish you are about being around little critters.
When I was attending
the screening course for Air Force Survival Instructors, the instructors wanted
to impress upon students that you can’t let discomfort come between you and the
actions you’ll need to take to survive. As a way of helping students get used
to that idea, we had a whole slew of terrariums that were filled with all kinds
of creepy crawlies. I don’t remember everything that was there, but there were
lizards, toads, spiders, bugs, mice, and snakes. We had the opportunity to “get
friendly” with them. We had to clean the containers they all lived in, so we
had to handle them and get accustomed to holding things we’d ordinarily shy
away from.
This guy had a Banana Ball Python around his neck
We even had Max, a
20-foot Python, which we needed to feed every few weeks.
Taking Max out for feeding time
Max getting ready for lunch
Some of us were more
creeped out than others when it came to these critters. Some people weren’t
bothered by most of them, but might have a problem with one or two of them. I
don’t know that there was anyone who was unfazed by everything, but it was all
done for the sake of meeting our discomfort, or even fear, head on.
You might find yourself in the middle of a situation where you’re creeped out by what you see around you. This might be your opportunity to get more comfortable with the idea of functioning well in the presence of something that gives you the willies.
Are you being held back because of your fear of something? It might be that forward progress can only happen after you face your fear. Fighting for your survival can be a messy business, and a lot of it comes down to how much discomfort you’re willing to accept. Are you willing to get uncomfortable?
For Christmas 2014 we
visited my wife’s folks in northwestern Ohio. Instead of going straight there
from Virginia, we drove to see some family near Dayton first. The kids had lots
of fun playing with cousins, staying up later than usual, and generally wearing
themselves (and us) out. At the end of that visit, we drove about two and a
half hours to my in-laws’ place.
I think it was the afternoon
of the 26th or 27th; I was worn out. There were two
Christmas celebrations with two different sides of the family, but my young
family had to skip one of them because the kids were worn out, sick, or getting
sick. My oldest actually developed an ear infection, so we spent some time in
an Urgent Care because of the pain she was in. I was beat, so I was laying on
the living room floor, starting to fall asleep.
There were people
moving around. My father-in-law, Lee, took a moment to sit down on the couch,
put his feet up, and close his eyes. My wife and her mom Pam were moving around
the area, working on a few other things as I drifted off.
Then I heard my wife’s
worried tone. I don’t remember much of what she was saying, but she was urgently
trying to soothe Lee. Pam came rushing over, too, and then there were two
worried tones. I opened my eyes to see what was happening, and Lee, still
reclining on the couch, looked like he was having a seizure.
I got up and ran over. He was unresponsive, his eyes were fluttering, and his body was spasming. I tried picking him up to lower him to the ground…no easy task when someone’s body goes completely rigid. I laid him flat on the ground, and my CPR training from nearly 20 years prior came rushing back. I checked for breathing, but there didn’t seem like there was any. I retilted his head to try opening his airway, but still nothing. I forgot to do a finger sweep to see if there was anything in his mouth, which ended up causing some complications later. I began doing rescue breathing on my father-in-law.
Finding a pulse can be
a tricky thing. When I learned CPR on dummies, we didn’t use the kind that simulated
pulses. As a result, we did a pulse check knowing full well there wasn’t going
to be one. I tried his neck, I tried his wrist, and I tried his chest. I
couldn’t find anything, so by all counts I should have begun doing CPR, but I
doubted myself. I thought “well this might be a faint one right here.”
In my mind it’s a scary thing to begin chest compressions, because that means
someone’s in REAL trouble. I ended up not doing any compressions because I
wasn’t thinking objectively; I hadn’t thought about any of this in years and I
was scared of messing up.
Somewhere in this
sequence we called an ambulance. Thankfully, there was a volunteer fire station
not two blocks away, so they arrived very quickly. That time we spent waiting
for them seemed like it took forever, though. Between trying to find a pulse,
rescue breathing, trying to shoo the kids out of the room, and all the
confusion going on, it was chaos. My youngest, who was a little older than a
year at the time, crawled over Lee’s legs, cheerfully unaware that anything was
wrong, before we got the kids wrangled up.
Once the EMTs arrived I
happily yielded to someone who knew a lot more about what to do in this
situation. Almost right away after evaluating the situation, they wrapped some
kind of band around Lee’s chest, and it began doing chest compressions on its
own. We filled in some of the volunteers on what happened, what kind of meds
Lee took, etc., all while the EMTs worked on him. It seemed to take awhile, but
eventually they prepared to load him into the ambulance. As they were busily
moving about, I asked one of them “do we have a pulse?” I was very
glad to hear “we do, but it’s weak.”
They loaded Lee into
the ambulance, and off they went. I drove Pam to the hospital, chasing right
behind. The trip was a short one, thankfully. We went into the ER and eventually
met up with the doc on duty, and we told him what we knew. A flurry of phone
calls, conversations with doctors, and newly arriving friends of the family
followed. This particular hospital wasn’t well equipped to deal with this
situation, so they prepared to transfer Lee via helicopter to a larger hospital
in Toledo about an hour away by car. Shortly before the helicopter departed,
the staff invited a few of us back to where Lee was being prepped for the trip.
He was intubated, had IVs and heart monitors in place, and was still
unconscious. This was Pam’s opportunity to see Lee one more time before
splitting up to travel separately.
After a few moments, we
left the ER. Some friends of the family volunteered to drive Pam up to the
hospital in Toledo. We went back to the house and got a few things packed for
Pam. My wife, deeply concerned about her father, wanted to go along too, so she
got ready to leave. In a whirlwind they grabbed a few items and headed out. Once
they departed, I was left there with my three young kiddos, just the four of
us, in a house that suddenly seemed very quiet, and we didn’t know how long it
would be before anyone came back.
Looking back, I didn’t
do any chest compressions on Lee even though I probably should have. No, I
hadn’t had any refresher training in a long time, but I knew what was next in
the sequence. The reason I didn’t do it was because I was so scared of making
the wrong decision (starting chest compressions when there was no need to do
them) that I ended up making no decision. On the other hand, enough training
came back to me to be able to help Lee in the immediate situation until more
skilled people arrived. Ultimately the EMTs and volunteers’ speedy arrival was
crucial in Lee living long enough to open his eyes again, but for the next few
days we weren’t sure if that was going to happen.
You have to train now for things that will happen in the future. By the time you get there and need the knowledge, it will be too late to learn something and start new habits. I’m not talking strictly in the sense of emergency response, but for difficult and trying times in general. They’re coming. How do you react when things go sideways? What are you spending your time thinking about, moving toward, and taking steps to become? When hard times come, do you dig harder into devotions and prayer, or stop doing them altogether? If your track record is to be considered your training regimen, have you been training yourself to turn to God, or away from him?
Lee’s chances of survival were dropping the longer I hesitated. Even though I knew what I should be gearing up to do, I didn’t start doing it because I wasn’t confident about his pulse. The things you’ve spent time repeating, drilling into yourself, come back to you though, and you can draw on them when you need them. What do you do repetitively and regularly today in order to prepare yourself for when you’ll need it in the future?
I’m gonna skip ahead a
little bit on our Olympic adventure.
My buddy and I woke up at a rest stop on our first day in Utah after snoozing in sleeping bags in the car. Our breath had condensed and frozen on the windows overnight. We were only about an hour away from Salt Lake City. After all the driving of the past two days, we were excited to be so close, so we got ready for the day and headed out.
Our breath condensed and froze on the car’s windows overnight
Just arriving in the
area was thrilling. Olympic signs and venues were all over the place. Ski
jumps, the Olympic rings, extra decorations, it was great. As we drove on the
highway through the city, a lot of the buildings were decorated with massive
posters of winter sports. We drove into the city, parked, and walked around
downtown, happy to be done driving long distances for a bit. The weather was
gorgeous; sunny and warm. We saw the Mormon Temple, some of the other local
sights, got some donuts, and toured the State Capitol, where there was a
traveling exhibit of the Declaration of Independence.
We were super excited
to finally be at our destination, but we still had to figure out where we were
going to sleep that night. A little after noon we drove out of the city and
toward some public land. As it turns out, the public land in that area is much
higher in elevation. Added elevation brings lower temperatures and more snow.
As we drew near the place we intended to camp, we stopped at a ranger station to get some more info. Following their directions, we drove until reaching the end of the line; past a certain point they stopped plowing the road. Snowmobiles were all over the place. The only other way in was on foot.
It’s on foot from here
My buddy parked the car
in the parking lot and the two of us broke out our cross-country skis. Between
the weather and the time of day, visibility was starting to drop and it was going
to start getting dark soon. We needed to find a campsite quickly, and we didn’t
have time to be too choosy about what spot to use. The two of us skied in, found
a spot, then skied back out to the car to grab our gear. We were both decent
skiers at the time, but neither of us had ever skied with heavy packs before.
They throw off your balance and make it much trickier!
We returned to our site and stomped down the snow to make a spot for the tent. We set up the tent, broke out the stove, and started heating up dinner while unpacking and arranging the rest of our gear for the night. Between not having much to do after dark and still being accustomed to East Coast time, we cracked open and tossed some footwarmers into the sleeping bags and were in for the night a little after 7:30 pm.
Just as a refresher, up
until this point in my life the only other time I remember sleeping outside was
in a tent in a neighbor’s backyard in the summer as a kid. Now I’m sleeping in
a tent in the Wasatch Mountains in February as the snow/sleet falls around us. After
sleeping in a car for the past two nights, it was a nice change to be able to stretch
out all the way. I slept pretty well until the coyotes started howling later at
night. For anyone accustomed to hearing them, you know that there’s nothing to
worry about, but if you’re not used to them, you start wondering just how long
it will take for a determined coyote to rip through a flimsy tent.
I’d be lying if I told
you that I wasn’t afraid of doing what we were doing. It’s one thing to talk
like you’re going to do something that stretches you, but it’s something else
entirely to do it. Driving from New York to Utah is an adventure in itself, but
at least during that whole time, you’ve got a car…with heat, a roof, and a
trunk full of stuff. Now we had a tent, sleeping bags, and whatever we could
carry in our packs, and we set up camp in a spot that, for all we knew, was at
the bottom of a mountain that was ready to trigger an avalanche. And it was snowing.
Why on earth would I do
this?
I was willing to do it
because this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I refused to be left behind. I was
in college with few or no other responsibilities, the Winter Olympics were
happening in my country, I had the opportunity to go see them, and I had a
friend that was willing to do the same crazy thing. In the 17 years since that
trip, no similar opportunity has come around again for me.
For just a moment, think
about your life and the choices you regret. Often the things that come to mind first
are the things you did not do. For everyone,
even Christ-followers, there are things you wish you would’ve done differently.
Think about the choices that lie before you now, or that you’ll have to address
soon. One day you might pause to reflect on them, too. At different times in
our lives, everyone’s got a “thing,” an idea that nags at them even when they
try to shake it. Many times this is God’s nudge, saying “hey, I want you to do
this.” You probably don’t know what will happen if you do it. Maybe you do. Some
day you might be in Heaven, talking face to face with the creator of the
universe. “Remember when I prompted you to do that thing?” If you have regrets about not
doing something now, imagine what it
will be like then.
Don’t feel bad about
being scared; everybody’s scared of something. Letting fear stop you from doing
or being a part of big things is where you start missing out. Don’t let a fear
of being fearful paralyze you and prevent you from taking the next step that God’s
called you to take.
Refuse to be left behind.
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