diving from planes.

Today, I was reading and writing in a cafe that I've started spending a lot of my time in. This woman was sitting by me at the window bar, and she started talking to me. We began discussing how beautiful the sky was and how nice and quiet it was in here. Yet, as I told her about myself, somehow it became a conversation about life and fear. I told her about Rwanda and moving here to Portland, how I was afraid, how I was afraid for my family, but how I knew it was what God would have me do. I told her how in Rwanda, I was met with my three greatest tangible fears: heights, spiders, and blood. However, I conveyed to her how sweetly God had done so many beautiful reparations to fear-torn parts of my soul in the midst of these. After this, she began to talk to me about how she'd been struggling with fear in her life.

She told me recently that she went skydiving because it was something she'd always been afraid of and wanted to overcome. She said she just knew she had to do it. She wanted a physical representation of not being controlled by her fears.

She said she had 15 minutes of instructions, and the most important part was to spread your arms and expose your chest, as she put it "heart first." That is how it is best to fall, and what a succesful trip entails. After the instructions she had to fill out paperwork releasing her life in case of injury, or even death. She also had to sign away her son to a guardian, in the event of her death. She said she really had to think about these things. After she had signed herself away, she then had to wait four hours. Four hours of cyclical thinking. Should she go through with this or no? Then, when it became time for the jump, she was strapped in front of her guide. She said she'd thought she would be able to hide behind him. Not the case. When she finally jumped, she said she began scrambling. Finally she remembered what she was to be doing. She spread her arms, letting her whole body lay bare and she found it beautiful.

As she was saying this to me, I sat thinking, "Hmm. This is truth, isn't it?"

I started thinking about this past year, and some tendancies I have to think in terms of gains or losses. I remember, the very beginning of my faith, the acknowledgement that every part of who I'd been would change. I remember, trying to decide if it was worth it. All our lives before that had been "fight or flight." However, I think by the time I came to know I needed the Lord, I was unable to fly or fight. I was unable to do anything. It is poor thinking and theology when we now think we are able to do either or anything apart from him. I began thinking about all my fears, from the inside and from the world. I began to think about this God that is invisible. This God that promises love beyond sight, and I think about the way he is the one who changed me when I could not move, when I was dead in my fears.

I wish that fear was something that vanishes as soon as one decides to follow God. It's not, but it is something that loses its power and strength over it's captive. Lydi, the dear girl I was with in Rwanda, recently sent me a letter with a home-made sign that says "Perfect Love Casts Out All Fear." It is true. I've found so many times that instead of believing that, instead of knowing that the Lord is my safety, I cover my body with fear like it is some sort of shield. If anything, it only keeps away our understanding of Love. It is okay to go ahead with jumps, with dives, with all endeavors we are lead into that before seemed impossible. However, it is imperative that when the Lord calls us to do something, we not try to cover our bodies, we not try to swim in air as we would in water with our arms making a peaceful dive impossible. Instead, I want to be one that spreads my arms as wide as possible. There is something startlingly beautiful in spreading your arms in wide vulnerability to Love.

The lady said that when she stopped scrambling, she was able to see, and see more clearly the world than every before. And that she could rest and watch and be glad.

I don't know how many safe planes I am to jump from before I meet the Lord face to face, but I do know that I want to do so as many times as I'm allowed,, barechested, in order to see from his heights.