6-26-13
A slip
An acceleration of speed
Bouncing, grasping, clutching
Reeling
I am not in control
This will not end good
Impact
A guttural bark
Stillness
Silence
My head is not soft
My arms bleed
I am alive
I am alive
I’m not in control
I never was
But I fell down the rabbit hole
To find out someone else is
And He loves me
And did not let me foot strike against a stone
Praise Jesus for saving my life.
I wrote these words last June, after I slid 100 feet down a rock face.
I was hiking with some friends and stood at the top of a small waterfall that spilled across bedrock as it cut its way through the forest and down the hill. When my feet went out from under me I quickly realized I was not in control. I grasped wildly for a branch but my body picked up speed. I heard myself start to yell as the universe slowed. What probably took about ten seconds seemed like an eternity. I began to bounce and found myself completely airborne, staring helplessly into the clear summer sky. My carcass crumpled abruptly in a jam of logs at the base of the waterfall.
I was dazed. I slowly felt my head to see if I had cracked my skull. Though my arms and legs were bleeding, they weren’t broke. When I tried to sit up, my head started to swim so I drug myself out of the freezing river to where my knees were propped up and my head was downhill. This is the position my brother found me in. He thought I had died.
God protected me. I landed just where the stream passed under the road. The log jam caught me from falling another eight feet headfirst into a concrete pit. If that had happened I would not have survived. Since we were near the road I didn’t have to hike back up the hill to the car and we were at ER within thirty minutes
X-rays revealed that I had no broken bones. The doctors kept shaking their heads and telling me I was in way better shape than I should be. I told them I was blessed.
Having a near death experience changes your perspective on life. I felt so close to death that day that every experience immediately afterwards seemed filled with vitality. When I poured my cereal the next day I thanked God that I was alive. Every activity buzzed with the gift of continued existence.
After I fell, there was a seismic shift in my thinking. I felt as if my life had ended and God had allowed me to go into overtime. I was as if I was being faced with the question ‘what would you do with your life if you had a second chance?’ I realized that many things that I had considered important really weren’t, and that I wanted to follow God into doing something that would last in eternity.
Over the past few years, God had been steadily growing in me the desire to get involved in global great commission work. I never took the first steps because there were possessions, relations, and dreams I valued as more important. Since my thinking had changed I started looking for an organization to partner with.
I found Adventures in Missions through their website and agreed with their focus on disciple making. I originally applied to serve for a year in Guatemala but God changed my heart and I am presently headed to Maai Mahiu, Kenya to work with 61project.
Falling down the waterfall was such a stupid freak incident, but God used it to dismantle some idols and reroute the course of my life. I am thankful that He is in control and I know He is faithful to complete the good work He started in me.
