Surrender

As originally posted on relevantmagazine.com


It's an early summer day in May. I'm high in the Collegiates of Colorado. The sky stretches over this raggedy-edged part of the earth like saran wrap over a heaping bowl of cookie dough. I’m beat – defeated by this enormity of this land. The climb behind me was grueling; I’m deaf to all but my fast, rhythmic breathing, and I realize that I can't turn back. If the climb this far was this tough, this dangerous, then the descent via the same path would be brutal. No, my eyes are set ahead of me – only a few more feet to the peak, and it’s there the real Adventure awaits.

I put on the harness, snug the belt, and double-check the clips. The belayer fastens to me the single rope that will become my lifeline, the only thing to tether me in my drop. He directs me to the edge of the platform. Did I mention I’m backwards, facing the cliff, my backside turned to face eternity? I listen intently to my last bit of crucial instructions, and then it comes. The Ruth with Naomi moment. The decision to jump into the unknown or go back to something safer (if that’s even possible now). I have to sit into the harness. Sit. As in, the harness becomes a chair that dangles me over what feels like an eternity of nothingness. Backwards. My legs must become horizontal, my head level with what was my footing. The bottom of the 100-foot cliff feels a mile away, but I can’t think about that now. I’m concentrating on the surrender into the belts, the rope, the belayer. After slacking a few feet down, I’m ready for the vertical descent…


…and I go for it… all the way… no holds barred. I find myself flying down this mountain face, the horizon stretching forever away from me, the clouds increasing their distance, the vertical rocks my road. No, my runway. I am lost in the thrill of the dare, in the desire for the heights taken form as a freefall into nothing, in the pursuit and adventure so big all I can do is surrender. The words of Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, resound in my ears, “Do not dare not do dare.”

A few jutting boulders, a slippery bit of graveled edge, forms my stopping place. It’s not the bottom of the mountain, not by far. But it’s here I unleash myself from the harness. It’s here I rest for a bit from the momentum, here I look up to my journey thus far. What I ride, I hear myself say under my gasping breath. My legs, weakened by the surge of adrenaline through my body, barely give a firm stand. It’s not over, but it’s here I find the courage to be still after the dare of saying “yes” to the invitation to fly.

For a few seconds I’m thinking on the fear that had held me down from here, that had kept me from taking the trail that led to the peak in the first place. Would I make it? Would I find the strength to get far enough, or would I have to back down? Would it be good if I did make it? And once I climbed and reached the destination (that wasn’t really a destination at all), would I have the courage to let go? And if I did find the courage (I since learned it wasn’t so much about courage, but rather desperation and surrender), would the Tether hold? Would I have what it took?

Mountain aspen is thick in these parts. Their stature is bold, noble. They swan dive straight into the sea of sky above. Their might is tested in the winds and the storms that rage across the landscape. But they don’t shrink back. They don’t hide in shadow and shade. Their surrender to what they were made for becomes the glory of their Creator.

And so it is in me.