Getting Higher

I am afraid of heights.  I don't really know why, though my memory of a day when I decided to join my dad while he was working on our two story home's flat roof comes to mind as something more a nightmare than a dream.  In any case, I am afraid of heights.

So today, as we were walking downtown Colorado Springs, and I looked up at these guys across from the post office, I froze.  I didn't freeze enough not to reach for my camera.  I just stopped walking while Mona went ahead to pick up our mail thinking I was right behind her.

 What is it that gives some the ability to do
                                   things without fear that make others cringe in abject terror?

What is it that allows some to overcome their fear so that they can do what they have never done before?  It does happen, you know.

 Years ago, when Ramona was a child, she experienced a horrible fright while playing under water. She thought she could not get air.  And from that day she did not, ever, put her head under water again.  Until...

Until one day she saw her grandsons in a campground pool we were sharing put their heads under water for the first time and express such glee at seeing the strange new world, even in a chlorined pool.

What was it that made her fear placing her head under water all those years?  And what was it that gave her the courage that day, without telling anyone of us she was doing it, to let herself simply sink under the blue green ripples and feel herself immersed in a world she could not enter a moment before.

I so remember the moment I looked for her in the pool, could not find her, felt a small twinge of , "Where...?" and then saw her slowly rise up, head first, from under.  I think I yelled.  maybe I screamed. But all of us stopped what we were doing, and maybe the rest of the swimmers did too, to watch Mona, for the first time in our memory, come dripping head to shoulders out of the water, only to go under again, and again, and again.




I do not know what bit is that makes us fear, but I think I know what makes us able to deny our fears.





When we want something badly enough, we will do literally anything to get it.  I don't mean 'things', though I know some aberrant and even inhuman behavior has occurred when a certain kind of person wants some THING too much. No, I am talking about wanting to share the joy of an experience so much that you actually do what before you never thought you would do.

I am afraid of heights, but Mona took a hot air balloon ride once and I so wanted to experience it with her that somehow I was able to place myself completely in God's hands and step over that low wicker hand rail and into the basket to effortlessly glide up a thousand feet and more for an experience, for me, of a lifetime.

Ah! Have I answered at least my second question myself?  I placed myself in God's hands. I literally and completely said, "Lord, I'm yours, so use me as you will today as I allow myself to step into this awful frightening low walled, fragile and frail basket."  And so He did, and has ever since.

I am still afraid of heights.  But I know if I ever need not to be God will once again remove my fear.

The year after we camped at that pool with our daughter Jennifer's family the two of us went to Cancun, Mexico, and Mona swam, with me, and the fishes, off a coral reef near Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women.
 

Mona doesn't snorkel much anymore. Not out of fear of the water.  Just because we haven't gone to where the water is warm enough for her to even want to get into it.

But if she ever wants, or for some reason needs, to go in badly enough, I know she won't  let even the cold keep her from doing so.

Mona knows how to give God her fear too. And together, we help each other defeat our fears, with God's strength.

Fears of coach breakdowns, dead batteries, getting lost, crowded cities, and even, if need be, heights.

-Pastor Ken