I was twelve and headed into middle school. We were in the middle of the Appalachian mountains, at a Bible college in West Virginia. Rock climbing, rappelling, rafting for Jesus. I was in the middle of a log slung between two trees and the best way for me to get down, was to fall. Cross my arms over my chest, and tip my body backward. Trust that the rope was going to catch me. Racking sobs followed a very brave tipping backward. You have to trust that the rope is going to do what it is there for. You have to have faith in the rope. Then: Fall.

They don’t tell you, in the devotional around the camp fire when you recount your heroing tail, that in life you don’t get to choose when your falling. You don’t always get to steady yourself and take a deep breath before you pitch yourself over the edge. Sometimes you get pushed, sometimes the platform you were expecting is pulled from under you, sometimes you look around and realize you have been falling for a while. There isn’t always, before that fall, the chance to take a breath and decide that you do trust the rope, that there is faith that the rope will catch you.

But it isn’t in the fall or even the moment before the fall that you decide to put your faith in that rope. It is the moment, on the ground, before the adventure begins, when you hitch your harness to the rope and tell your guide you are ready. That is the moment you have chosen what you trust in when you fall.

I am linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday. Check it out!