What Would I Do...?

Yesterday I wrote about my experience at Tahoe Treetop Adventure Park, traveling treetop to treetop via ziplines and swinging, bouncing aerial obstacles. I had to trust my equipment or I never would have stepped off any of the treetop platforms. I had to trust that if I fell off the tightrope stretched high above the ground, my equipment had me.

As I inched across sky-high (or so it felt) tightropes yesterday, I kept reassuring myself, “You don’t need to be afraid. If you fall, you will just dangle in the harness. Trust the equipment.”

I want to live like that every day. Not jumping off of high things with a harness around my crotch. But making choices based on trust that God’s got me rather than on fear of making a mistake.

I’m not advocating making stupid, impulsive decisions and trusting God to make it all turn out OK. I’m talking about trusting a God who is gracious, good, and loving. Who isn’t afraid or offended or angered by my mistakes…of which there have been plenty. He knows my heart, that I want to do the right thing. That I want to please Him.

So when I step off the sky-high platform, so to speak, I can trust that He has me. Even if I screw up and make a bad decision. Because, let’s face it, most of the time, He doesn’t write on our next Post-it Note—DO THIS or DON’T DO THAT! We WILL make mistakes. But He’s got us, and He can use anything and everything for good -- to grow us, to draw us closer to Him, to bless others.

One of my favorite podcasts is Typology with Ian Crohn. He often asks his guests, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

That is a question that has been brewing in me. If I weren’t afraid of making a mistake, if I really trusted that God has me, what would I do?

I don’t think it was an accident that I was hanging from a harness on a tree-top zipline yesterday. I will return to that experience again and again as I lean into the question…

What would I do if I weren’t afraid?