To my Redhanded Jill…
Sometimes, life is like standing behind a waterfall. Not in it, but watching it rush down in front of you. Wanting to step out, wanting to know what it feels like to be brave. To be the one who knows what it feels like to stand under the rushing water and feel it pounding down on you. You hesitate, waiting, thinking too much. What if it hurts, what if the pressure is too much? You stretch out your hands and feel the cool water run between your fingers. You climbed slick rocks to get here. Steep rocks that echo the remnants of thousands upon thousands of gallons of ancient water. Water that passed through here never to return and water that that made it back only to be gone again. The rocks tell the story of the others. Other explorers, other adventurers. The others that cannot stand the thought of ordinary and search for the extraordinary. You sat down too many times to count up this rise. You decided not even God himself could move you another inch. “I’m done LORD” you said. You didn’t hear His silent chuckle because He knows you were born for this. He put that pirate heart in you. He let you rest, tend your wounds and when all movement stopped, He whispered “Come child” and you did. Over and over and over again. Here you stand now knowing that there were others who stepped forward into the curtain of coursing waters, the sideways tide. Yet in the back of your mind you know that there were some who came and saw and were so close. So close to stepping out but never did. In these seconds you choose. Your foot never falters as you step out on the ledge. The water pours down on your head, a glorious crown, and you hear the echoes of joy of those who stood where you stand now. It is magnificent and thrilling but there is still that last step to take.To jump or not to jump? Free fall into the watery abyss or be driven back by the same fear that weighed you down the entire way up the mountain.What lies beyond the liquid curtain? “Jump” you tell yourself, “just jump!!”But your frozen feet won’t move and inside that moment lays a thousand days and hours just like before. “Why Lord, why did you bring me here if I can’t do it? Lord, help me! I’m afraid!” Then you remember, you cannot do it. You cannot do it, but He can. Only the maker of the waterfall knows how high He made it. And He does. You meet the wind and and your body feels weightless as your feet lift off. Through, over, down. But this is not descending, this is a mountaintop with God. A rebellion against your human form with the taste of eternity on your lips. You slice through the water with a new name. Brave. You have become one of the others, the ones who dare to believe.
Photo credit: Bobbi Adams
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An Imperfect Christian 