I know there is a style of jeans today that you can buy pre-ripped or torn, but I was raised to believe a good pair of jeans were not threadbare or had any visible holes. By the time a hole formed in my jeans as a child, they were either repaired or simply thrown away. So to conceive of battered and holey jeans as something of beauty was a stretch for me. In fact, it still is…except for this one pair.
In 2004, I became a Certified Ropes Course Instructor. The Ropes Course is a program based on the experiential learning model. The term experiential is derived from the word experience and refers to the ‘experience of existence’. Although a successful Ropes Course program will include some skill building, skills and experience are two separate issues. Skills are taught through instruction, repetition and demonstration. Experience isn’t taught, it is accumulated. This was the first of many experiences I was to accumulate on a ropes course.
Part of my training was book learning and the other part was hands-on. The end goal of an instructor is not to just teach skills, but to help participants accumulate spiritual experiences in a meaningful setting. Therefore, my group needed to know more about the elements than merely how they worked. We needed to experience for ourselves what it was like to complete the course. So after lunch, I put on my confident mask that I wear so well, and headed into the woods to meet my fate head on.
We started on The Wall. Just the name of the element still runs chills up and down my spine. The object here is to have every member of the team scale the twelve foot wall and drop to the landing on the other side. At the time, I might have told you that my biggest fear was heights, the kind of heights where there is no safety net or fence to hold you back. I viewed my acrophobia as common, something that most people could understand and it wasn’t anything I needed to hide. The reality was this fear played second fiddle to my deeper fear of trusting someone other than myself. This, on the other hand, was to be guarded as one keeps a hardened criminal behind bars, locked in a penitentiary with maximum security.
How could a married woman with two children and a seemingly normal life have such deep-seeded trust issues? I know the real term is deep-seated because Mr. Webster says so, but deep-seeded is more like how I felt. Deep-seeded conjures up an image of too deeply planted corn. There is so much anxiety that it won’t come up or that the crop will come up spottily and have to be replanted. The extra expense of a second planting will eat up all the profit even if the price of corn is high in the fall. Thus, it was easier to trust in only myself than to try and push through all the heavy soil that lay above my dry, trustless seed. I couldn’t give control over to anyone else and still be able to function properly.
Nevertheless, there it was, staring me in the face. I wasn’t about to crawl up on someone else’s back, then stand on their shoulders, reach up to the guy who had already gone over the wall, and let him pull me up. This scenario wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime.
I knew I had to do something quick, so I devised a plan that would keep both my feet planted firmly on the ground. Our group was instructed at the beginning this was to be a silent exercise. We could use hand gestures, but no words could be spoken. Perfect! I am a born leader, so I jumped right in and began to point to people one by one indicating it was their turn to scale the wall. No one questioned my authority. I kept this charade up until I was the only one at the bottom. Then I lay down in the dirt and played dead. I am not kidding. I laid there while my entire team was on the upper landing waving their arms around as if taking an ASL exam in high school. They were just as sure that I would succeed in scaling the wall as I was that pigs could fly.
Out of desperation, the course instructor said we could talk. A flood of voices came hurling down to me that I wasn’t going to be left behind. The team had this ocean deep sense that they failed if I failed. Okay, this was it, I would have to pretend to succumb to peer pressure and at least give it a half hearted attempt so they could see this was physically impossible for me. I stood up and began to jump, trying to reach their grasping hands, but to no avail. I laid back down on the ground. Surely they would now see the wisdom in my sacrifice. I was simply taking one for the team. I wished it was that easy.
Just when I thought they would have to relinquish all effort, two of the strongest men grabbed the feet of another man and hung him over the wall. He was dangling down, head first, and arms outstretched, blood rushing to his face. To make matters worse, this man was a friend of mine. He pleaded with me to grab his arms. It was the second hardest thing I would do that day, but it was also the moment that would create a life-long treasure out of an ordinary piece of clothing.
The men up top pulled both my friend and me up that wall. Higher and higher I went, as did my blood pressure. When my friend’s center of gravity made it over the wall, he was still holding onto my arms, but I needed more help. Another team member leaned over the wall and grabbed me by my belt loop. Just when I thought I would get over, the belt loop of my timeworn jeans broke and my body fell once again, flat to the wall. I knew in that instant that I was going to die. If not from the fall, then the heart attack that surely preceded it would do me in. With all the strength I could muster and a fervent prayer in my heart, I swung my leg as high as I could toward the top of the wall. My thigh was caught, I was dragged over the ledge, and my ordeal was over. The only real casualty that day was my jeans. I know how the belt loop got torn, but I am clueless as to the moment the fabric above my knee ripped from seam to seam.
I will never fit into those size eight jeans again, but nevertheless, there they sit at the bottom of my jean drawer. That single pair of ripped and torn denim fabric will forever be a reminder that fears, when tackled with the help of my Lord and Savior, will reap great blessings. Because of the wall, I have received more joy, comfort and peace in my life than I could have possibly understood at the time. I have continued to receive blessings long after my initial decision to let go and let God. In essence, I was taken to a spiritual mountain and was shown a vision of what my life could be every time I put my trust in the Savior.
In 2004, I became a Certified Ropes Course Instructor. The Ropes Course is a program based on the experiential learning model. The term experiential is derived from the word experience and refers to the ‘experience of existence’. Although a successful Ropes Course program will include some skill building, skills and experience are two separate issues. Skills are taught through instruction, repetition and demonstration. Experience isn’t taught, it is accumulated. This was the first of many experiences I was to accumulate on a ropes course.
Part of my training was book learning and the other part was hands-on. The end goal of an instructor is not to just teach skills, but to help participants accumulate spiritual experiences in a meaningful setting. Therefore, my group needed to know more about the elements than merely how they worked. We needed to experience for ourselves what it was like to complete the course. So after lunch, I put on my confident mask that I wear so well, and headed into the woods to meet my fate head on.
We started on The Wall. Just the name of the element still runs chills up and down my spine. The object here is to have every member of the team scale the twelve foot wall and drop to the landing on the other side. At the time, I might have told you that my biggest fear was heights, the kind of heights where there is no safety net or fence to hold you back. I viewed my acrophobia as common, something that most people could understand and it wasn’t anything I needed to hide. The reality was this fear played second fiddle to my deeper fear of trusting someone other than myself. This, on the other hand, was to be guarded as one keeps a hardened criminal behind bars, locked in a penitentiary with maximum security.
How could a married woman with two children and a seemingly normal life have such deep-seeded trust issues? I know the real term is deep-seated because Mr. Webster says so, but deep-seeded is more like how I felt. Deep-seeded conjures up an image of too deeply planted corn. There is so much anxiety that it won’t come up or that the crop will come up spottily and have to be replanted. The extra expense of a second planting will eat up all the profit even if the price of corn is high in the fall. Thus, it was easier to trust in only myself than to try and push through all the heavy soil that lay above my dry, trustless seed. I couldn’t give control over to anyone else and still be able to function properly.
Nevertheless, there it was, staring me in the face. I wasn’t about to crawl up on someone else’s back, then stand on their shoulders, reach up to the guy who had already gone over the wall, and let him pull me up. This scenario wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime.
I knew I had to do something quick, so I devised a plan that would keep both my feet planted firmly on the ground. Our group was instructed at the beginning this was to be a silent exercise. We could use hand gestures, but no words could be spoken. Perfect! I am a born leader, so I jumped right in and began to point to people one by one indicating it was their turn to scale the wall. No one questioned my authority. I kept this charade up until I was the only one at the bottom. Then I lay down in the dirt and played dead. I am not kidding. I laid there while my entire team was on the upper landing waving their arms around as if taking an ASL exam in high school. They were just as sure that I would succeed in scaling the wall as I was that pigs could fly.
Out of desperation, the course instructor said we could talk. A flood of voices came hurling down to me that I wasn’t going to be left behind. The team had this ocean deep sense that they failed if I failed. Okay, this was it, I would have to pretend to succumb to peer pressure and at least give it a half hearted attempt so they could see this was physically impossible for me. I stood up and began to jump, trying to reach their grasping hands, but to no avail. I laid back down on the ground. Surely they would now see the wisdom in my sacrifice. I was simply taking one for the team. I wished it was that easy.
Just when I thought they would have to relinquish all effort, two of the strongest men grabbed the feet of another man and hung him over the wall. He was dangling down, head first, and arms outstretched, blood rushing to his face. To make matters worse, this man was a friend of mine. He pleaded with me to grab his arms. It was the second hardest thing I would do that day, but it was also the moment that would create a life-long treasure out of an ordinary piece of clothing.
The men up top pulled both my friend and me up that wall. Higher and higher I went, as did my blood pressure. When my friend’s center of gravity made it over the wall, he was still holding onto my arms, but I needed more help. Another team member leaned over the wall and grabbed me by my belt loop. Just when I thought I would get over, the belt loop of my timeworn jeans broke and my body fell once again, flat to the wall. I knew in that instant that I was going to die. If not from the fall, then the heart attack that surely preceded it would do me in. With all the strength I could muster and a fervent prayer in my heart, I swung my leg as high as I could toward the top of the wall. My thigh was caught, I was dragged over the ledge, and my ordeal was over. The only real casualty that day was my jeans. I know how the belt loop got torn, but I am clueless as to the moment the fabric above my knee ripped from seam to seam.
I will never fit into those size eight jeans again, but nevertheless, there they sit at the bottom of my jean drawer. That single pair of ripped and torn denim fabric will forever be a reminder that fears, when tackled with the help of my Lord and Savior, will reap great blessings. Because of the wall, I have received more joy, comfort and peace in my life than I could have possibly understood at the time. I have continued to receive blessings long after my initial decision to let go and let God. In essence, I was taken to a spiritual mountain and was shown a vision of what my life could be every time I put my trust in the Savior.