The tall buildings lite up the night sky and from my vantage point I had a panoramic view of the whole city. As beautiful as the sight was, the all too familiar contortions my body was going through put a damper on the whole event. I desperately needed something to cling to. The arm I reached for lay inches from me. A queasiness washed over me like a wave, twisting my stomach into a pretzel. I adverted my eyes from the view and repeated the mantra that I had rehearsed over in over in my mind:
"It is only a television show. You are on solid ground" It took my saying the words over and over out loud until the truth settled into my soul."
My fear of heights was by all rights a minor thing in comparison to what I had already weathered with the Lord's help. I had gone through abuse, slavery, a murder and more than one suicide,I was prepared to leave this fear unconquered. I could side step it and be perfectly content. After all part of being a follower of Christ is being "well grounded". That is what I reasoned in my own mind but the God of the universe had a plan to restore not just part of me but all of me.
When God wants to work on an area of life I get a rumbling in my soul that lets me know yet another area of my life is in need of the Master's touch. For those of you who may not know my emotions flat lined out for more years than I care to admit. They had suffered trauma after trauma and could only be defibulated by an act of God.. After the defibulation the first emotion to appear was my sense of humor. It was a delight for me, an amusement to some and still others found my brand of humor off the wall. Yet one by one my emotions surfaced.
Now there are only two emotions left. One was the ability to cry. Life has a way of hardening you during times of abuse. You harden yourself as a way of preparing for the next blow.You are in survival mode for so long that the hardness will not permit you to cry.
The next emotion if you want to call it that was the ability to scream. Lord knows I had a lot of reasons to scream, but much like the crying the screams never came forth. Only silent screams came from the very depth of my soul. How I longed to be able to scream that would manifest as an ear piercing sound.
Recently I was at a Bible study when one of the ladies had a word of prophesy for me. She told me she could see me on top of something high and I let out a scream and when I did more healing broke forth in my soul. I pondered what she said. I did not doubt her word but I questioned my ability to scream. If all the abuse I had been through would not permit me to scream than what would?
Two weeks later came a possible answer to my question. I had turned on the noon news as I prepared lunch for my husband and myself. A human interest story caught my attention. Not far from where I live they had just opened up a zip line tour. Before I could stop myself these words proceeded out of my mouth, "I want to try that for my birthday."
I was as shocked as my husband was that those words would flow out of my mouth considering I was so afraid of heights. Just to ensure that I had actually witnessed the video he began to expound on the journey I had just committed to.
"You realize that the first platform is 40 feet in the air. You will have a harness on and also another safety harness around you. You will be asked to take a leap of faith and step off the platform. You will fall until the slack in the rope is gone and then you will zip through the air attached to only a rope suspended between two trees. There are twelve platforms one right after the other that you will need to do. Although I did hear them say that after the first one you could quit and walk back if you must."
I nodded my head and did not waver in the decision I had made. For me it was a God thing. I called and made the necessary arrangements for my husband and I to go. I will do this on my 64th birthday just two weeks from now. Right now I am resting in the fact that God has ordained me to do this I have no second thoughts about doing this. Two things did come to mind though. One I have instructed my husband to give me a shove off the platform if I hesitated. Second it occurred to me that if anything was capable to evoke a scream out of me it surely would be being pushed off a platform 40 feet in the air.
TO BE CONTINUED IN TWO WEEKS COMPLETE WITH PICTURES.
Love Gracie!
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Publisher Link- Family Secrets: Letters to my Granddaughters. Grace's true story of abuse, kidnapping, slavery, murder, suicide, a 30 year memory loss and more....
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The leap of faith started as a journey down a winding path and me taking small steps due to the steepness. I had to be aware of every step I took, I dare not hurry for fear of risking going at a momentum that I could not stop.
This path led me to a solid rock where our first jump would take place. It was a very appropriate way to start out. As I stood on the ledge of the rock waiting to jump, I quietly asked, "Father go with me." I took a deep breathe and held it and jumped. I heard a small whimper venture out my throat on my first journey of flying through the trees. It was only seconds until I landed at the first platform. There would be eleven more zips to go.
I thought about Elijah when he was in a cave. He saw the mighty wind, the earthquake and finally the fire. He had looked for God in all of them. He had fully expected God would answer him in a big way. Yet God chose to answer him in a still small voice.
