conquering fear

“Just take the first step,” she called from below.

I wasn’t sure how I managed to get up to this point. I didn’t remember climbing the ladder, but I was the start of a high ropes obstacle course. Harnessed in and 20 feet off the ground. I hate anything that takes me up so high.

“You just have to start. You can do it,” she called again from below.

I almost looked down, but knew if I did that I would never get started.

Cautiously I took the first step onto the rope I was supposed to walk on. My hands tightly gripped the guide ropes to keep me balanced. With my second step everything started shaking. Each step got more challenging as the rope swayed more. My hands couldn’t grip the rope they were holding tightly enough. A few more steps and then my foot slipped. I didn’t fall, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue.

“Don’t give up. Just get your foot back  on the rope and keep going,” she encouraged from below.

I knew I couldn’t turn around on the narrow rope to get back to where I started and I wasn’t going to try to do it backwards either. I kept moving forward. This wasn’t so bad after all. I decided I could do this.

I finished walking the rope part. Next came a swinging wooden bridge. Conquered that. A balance beam. That high up? A single guide rope to hold onto. Slow and shaky steps, but I reached the end of it.

Then I reached the zipline. The last part of course. I froze again. Flying through the air? No way! I can’s do this. And from here, I could climb down and be done.

One more call of encouragement from below, “You’re almost done! You can do this!”

I was pretty sure I couldn’t, but she kept encouraging me. Finally, I closed my eyes and jumped. Well, more like I fell off the platform. A few seconds of falling before I was caught and then I sailed off the end. I couldn’t open my eyes until I reached the end. Feeling my feet hit solid ground was the greatest feeling in the world.

“See! I knew you could do it,” my friend exclaimed.

She was right. I had done it. I had faced my fears and done what I never thought I could do. It was so freeing! I have proved my inner thoughts wrong.

That day was my biggest life lesson on fear. Sometimes we just have to do it anyways. Stop letting fear keep you from trying. If I hadn’t put on the harness, if I hadn’t climbed up to the platform, if I hadn’t taken the first step, if I hadn’t kept going when I slipped, I never would have known the freedom of facing my fear and conquering it. There’s no better feeling I have found.

The same is true in all areas of our lives. We may be asked to do things that scare us to even think of trying. But, if we actually take the first step, we may just be surprised to find that we can do it. With each shaky, unsure step our confidence grows and before we know it we have done the thing we were most scared to do.

take a holiday?

Okay, I'm sitting here and just realized the clock says 11:45pm . . . meaning I only have 15 minutes left in the day I'm supposed to post something here. It's crazy how even just the first day off for holidays can mess with your schedule enough that you forget things. Sometimes change from the "normal" schedule does that.

I've been thinking a lot about our need for times we take a break lately. I think it come from realizing that it had been almost two years since I'd taken more than a day or two at a time for holidays. So now to have a week and a half off seems strange.

But, I'm learning that sometimes we need to take breaks from the busyness of daily life. We need time to rest. We need time to rejuvenate. Sometimes we just need a change from the everyday life we live for a few days.

At a leadership conference I was at last week, one of the speakers said, "you can't sprint for 6 months, but you can for 6 weeks." He was talking about it within the ares where we lead, but I started thinking about it in life in general. I can give something everything I have for a short, set period of time, but I can't do that indefinitely. I need breaks from doing that if I'm going to survive.

But I wonder if somehow in our culture today we've gotten ourselves mixed up on this and we're trying to sprint indefinitely. And when we discover we can't do that is when the catastrophic happens in our lives. Something that can take us out permanently.

Maybe that's why we need to once again embrace the importance of taking breaks - of taking holidays. You don't have to go somewhere and spend a lot of money to take a holiday. This holiday for me consists of lots of things I can do within an hours drive. But, I'm taking a break from most of my normal, everyday life. Somethings go on, but much of it is put aside right now. And I'm doing other things I don't always do.

It's what I needed. Maybe it's what you need to. To somehow figure out how to take a break - to rest, to rejuvenate. Not an endless break, we'd get bored then, but a break with a set end date. Time to remember why we do what we do each day and to be ready to jump back in with new energy.

contentment or longing?

What do you think of when someone brings up contentment?

What do you think of when someone talks about a longing for something?

Contentment and longing. Two words that bring a variety of responses.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like contentment more in my life or living with a long for something different. I always thought it had to be one or the other. That’s how it was taught to me.

I would tell people I long to get married one day and they tell me I have to be content with being single first. I would tell people I wanted children of my own one day and they tell me I have to be content with not having children of my own first. Rightly or wrongly, these comments told me it’s an either or.

But, lately I’ve discovered something about these two words that changed things in my life. It’s not and either or. It’s a both and.

Contentment and longing can both exist in my life. It’s not a case of choosing one or the other. I can embrace both at once. And it makes my life better. I can be content with things in my life right now and still have a longing for things I don’t have.

I can be content with a great job, a ministry to serve in at church that I love, an amazing family, and good friends. But, I can also have a longing to be married and have a family of my own. The contentment and the longings can coexist in my life.

A life without contentment sees us always running to the next thing. Our longings start to rule. Life becomes hurried and busy.

A life without longings is boring. We just go through each day doing what we always do. Nothing seems to change.

But when we combine the two, we live a better life. We learn to fully appreciate all we currently have. We also keep things moving as we long for something more and different.

It’s a challenge to find this balance, but I believe it is a must. We have to stop telling people they must be content with things the way they are and have no longing for anything else before God will allow anything to change in their circumstances. This simply isn’t true. And if they really followed that advice, nothing would ever change because they wouldn’t want it to change anymore.

What we need to do instead is learn how to keep our longings in check. We can’t let them rule our lives, but we can’t put them away for good either. We have to learn to walk the line between being controlled by our longings and becoming so content with how things are we don’t ever change.