Best Birthday Ever

Fear of heights is for real, folks.  Or as I was told while in college while on some crazy team building obstacle course like 1000 feet up on some wall, “it’s not heights you fear, it’s ledges.”  “Really, we are going to split the hair on a gnat when I am just about to literally die?”  That would have been my reply if I could have opened my mouth and actually uttered a word that day.   But that day, and many days before and after, found me in a speech paralysis (I know, that doesn’t seem possible).  Fear of anything can do that to me.  I have never been awakened in fear, rather my body and brain dissociate.  My brain races a thousand miles per hour firing off every possible catastrophic outcome, while my body seemingly weighs down in concrete and becomes immobile.  It’s like being trapped….wanting to run as fast as my mind races, all the while ice cold shards of fear paralyze me on site, with a stomach turning, unable to vomit due to the paralysis.  My respiratory rate usually climbs, but somehow a huge cleansing breath is not able to enter, because the fear paralysis only allows my ribs to move a tiny distance….really it’s shockingly unkind.  If the muscles in my chest would just fail, I would at least pass out like some fainting goat, and my brain would be delivered in the bliss of unconsciousness, where fear cannot turn the cogs of my mind at an unimaginable rate.  

And somehow, in 43 years I have managed to avoid most height/ledge triggers.  I’m perfectly happy on the ground.  I have no desire to sky dive or hot air balloon.  But there has been this one nagging thing that I have wanted to do deep down, but always denied; zip lining.  Our friends have a zip line course, and I see smiling happy visitors gliding down the lines.  This summer our oldest son was at Young Life Camp, and they had some sort of zip line or swing, and all I saw were smiling faces.  So I have lived as a closeted zip line desirer for years.  But the whole heights thing has kept me from even considering the opportunity.  Really?  Why would I deliberately lock myself into a fear paralysis (I’m raising 6 kids, at any point that could happen to me with no warning, so why plan out a fear adventure)….in front of any other human?  So when Kit and I planned our trip this October to Maui, we began to discuss the things we would like to do.  Since we were going to be there over my birthday, I threw out an adventure that to this moment still shocks me.  “Maybe we should go zip lining on my birthday,” escaped the preposterous words before I could filter them.  And with that, the “best zipline” in Maui was reserved to “celebrate” the passing of another year of my life.

She and I had a connection.

After starting my birthday snorkeling with a beautiful green sea turtle, I felt like the day was going to be spectacular.  However, as we drove upcountry towards the jungle ranch with the zip lines, I began to wonder if I really wanted to die on my actual birthday.  “At least no one would forget the date of my death, and I will go out with a bang?”  Each mile that counted down on the winding road amped up my fear level.  And yet, I had decided that I was not going to miss out on a single moment of joy in this life, and I wanted to see if this was all it was cracked up to be.  (And in honesty, I haven’t ever read about a tourist dying on a Maui zip line, so I figured I was at least on the side of statistics.  Yes.  I googled said event in preparation.) 

As our guide began to talk us through the release of responsibility forms, a huge knot formed in my throat, and the power of speech left me fully.  My mind had amped up to about 500 miles per hour, mostly screaming “STOP YOU IDIOT!  GO BACK!”  Somehow I managed to tremulously initial the salient points, and listen as I heard him say something like, “Don’t touch my equipment.  These parts are mine, I wouldn’t touch your equipment in your place of work.  SO keep your hands off these, and you’ll all live.”  WHAT?!?!  Is there really a chance that I am going to die?  Well I just signed off that I won’t sue if I do, so I am for sure not going to touch said equipment if my life is on the line.  Sheet white and struck dumb I stumbled over to the equipment closets, and donned my gear. 

And just like a lamb headed to slaughter, totally unaware of what was happening, as I was in a fear paralysis fog, we walked over a 6 inch wide suspension bridge towards our first obstacle.  If I could have turned around then, it would have been goodbye to the fee for this self chosen “adventure” and hello to a good stiff drink.  But as there were 14 of us, and I was in the middle of the group on a finger width bridge swaying 20 feet over an irrigation ditch, I carried on.  I’m sure they spoke some more instructions, which I didn’t hear, as we sat at the base of 4 story launching platform from which we would take our first zip line, 400 yards long over an open green field, as a practice run.  How I made it up to the platform still baffles me.  Each step up the staircase my equipment gained 10 pounds, and by the top, I was certainly hunched over from the weight of terror.  The first line was 4 lines wide,  and we were to take off from a platform that was about 5 feet in width and to my estimation appeared about as wide a postage stamp once I had stepped onto it.   As with each of the subsequent lines, we were hooked onto the platform as we stepped up onto it.  If I had tried to jump off, I would have just hung awkwardly from the edge, as I was latched in until the last moment.  Just as Kit and I were stepping onto the platform I swear a 100 mile per hour wind gust pitched up (okay maybe not, but you get the idea).   

"Do not touch my equipment," he said. 

I was instructed to step all the way to the first launch site, right up next to the wall of the tower and which required me to step up on an 8 inch high step.  As I stepped up, it became clear that the wall to my right was now no higher up on my leg than mid thigh!  The wind could literally have tipped me right over the side, and I was certain that my current attachment to the tower would likely give way.  HOLY COW!!!!!  If I could have screamed, or moved, or spoken I would have been done.  Our laid back, native Hawaiian guide strolled over, latched me onto the line, with the equipment that I was forbidden to touch or I’d die, and instructed me to squat down, and support my weight while squatting, and cling to the handles above me.  “Don’t worry,” he said, “you are still latched to the platform.”  Then he WALKED AWAY FROM ME!  I think he could smell fear, or at the very least see it.  Kit could certainly see it, because he kept asking me if I wanted to stop.  Somehow, I was able to finally spit out words without vomiting,  “the only way I’m going down is on this line.  Don’t talk to me.”  Squatting there, I was still latched in to the tower and completely TERRIFIED.   Once all 4 of us were hooked onto the lines, the guide came back to my end, and said, “Okay, I’m unhooking you from the platform.  Just keep squatting here until I tell you to let go.  You are holding yourself up here now.” 

I’m not certain, but I think I began screaming, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!” Well at least that was the cacophony in my head.  The wind continued to gust, and with each breeze that passed me I became aware that I may just actually have committed myself to a crushing death scenario.   I continued to squat and cling to the handles for all my life, while the wind gusts kept blowing past me on that postage stamp platform likely also swaying in the wind.  Now it is important to know that Sarah before our wreck, never made it to this platform.  And if she had gotten over the suspension bridge, she would have bailed before taking the first step of the climb up.  But this Sarah wants to live and experience life.  And so I stood there quivering and blinking back tears and shallow breathing.  And then it happened.  Our guide said, “On the count of three, lift up your feet, sit back and enjoy the ride.  One.  Two.  (‘Oh God, why have I done this to myself?’)  Three!”  And the instant my feet lifted off the platform, and the sling and contraption holding me on to the wire were keeping me up, my arms relaxed, and my paralysis disappeared, and my lungs filled with the most fabulous breath of fresh island air and there was a rush of ELATION!  The 400 yards went by quickly, and tears were gone, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling and squealing in intense joy.  Release of control brought me unimaginable freedom and joy. 

The second platform was reached by climbing up a 4 inch (okay, I just looked at the photos, and maybe it was really 18 inches, but that is not how I remember it)  suspension ladder, which caused fear to well up and once on the platform with just Kit and our guide, fear began fully blossom again.  As he unlatched me from the platform and asked me to squat there holding myself, fear threatened to choke me; not as severe as the first time, but still there.  When he said, “Three!” and my feet lifted up my heart began to soar again as I no longer held myself there, the equipment did all the work, and we glided over the jungle ravine below us.   

And somewhere between the second and third platform I realized that I have spent so much of life believing that whether or not I survived depended somehow on how long or well I could hold myself in place on the platform; as if God hasn’t always had me latched in.  His Word says that nothing can separate me from Him.  And yet, I have lived so many years feeling that I was keeping myself up.  But these last 2.5 years since the world broke open for us He has been showing me the joy of surrendered living.   Since the night when we were unlatched from the illusion of control into the reality of God’s sovereignty I have experienced living like I felt on that zip line once I picked up my feet and rested in the mechanics that were holding me up.  But instead of man made zip lines and metal pulleys and latches keeping me up, God has been holding me up, guiding me through our life.  I feel freer than I have ever felt before.  And on the occasion that I do find myself on the platforms in life, thinking that I need to hold myself up, I desire for the lifting of my own feet, and relaxation of my arms, and the exhilaration of God carrying me on. 

Our zip lining excursion ended on a half mile long line, which carried us 710 feet above ground (that is higher than the Seattle Space Needle).  That one minute felt so much longer and joy bubbled over into laughter for me as I zipped along high above the jungle tree tops.  And all the while I kept realizing that there never needs to be an end to my zip line excursion with God.  He is willing to keep carrying me on, as long as I am willing to rest in Him.  That is freedom.   I turned in my equipment with sore cheeks from smiling that felt fixed while we road those five zip lines on my birthday.  And I thanked God that my zip lining with Him just continues.  Going where and when He leads is freedom, and my birthday excursion finally gave me a way to put into words what I have been feeling for these last years.   

Happy Birthday to me indeed!  Life on an adventure with assurance that I am being zip lined by the One who wrote my story, loves me better than any other human, and never turns back on His promise.  He keeps me latched in and I don’t ever have to hold myself up alone.  Best birthday ever.  

I'm leaving it all on the table in this life!