Have you ever been so terrified your fear froze you in your tracks? I mean literally frozen and unable to move? I have. It was over thirty years ago, but the memory is clear.
Floridians In The Snow
I am a native Floridian, so I didn’t grow up participating in winter sports—except for when the new civic center opened in town and offered ice skating during Christmas break. Any skiing I ever did was on water, not snow.
Somewhere along the way, my younger brother decided he wanted to snow ski. He skied a few times as a teen then attended Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. He stayed in North Carolina after he graduated, where he became a ski instructor at a local ski mountain. To this day, he still loves being on a pair of skis swooshing down the snow-covered slopes. As I write this piece, he is enjoying a ski trip in Colorado with his family.
I gave up snow skiing a decade ago. I enjoyed it when I was in my 30s and 40s, but the older I became, the more cautious I became. On the few times I am near snow, I prefer to enjoy looking at it through a window as I am snuggled up in front of a crackling fire.
The Beginning Of A Family Tradition
When my children were little, my parents gave us a trip for Christmas rather than a lot of things. (Now, if you knew my mother, you know there were indeed things involved, just not as many). Our first family trip was to Ski Heavenly at Lake Tahoe in March 1993. Our children were four and two and my brother and his wife at the time did not yet have children.
It was a beautiful setting. The skiing was fantastic. Heavenly was unique in that you could ski back and forth between California and Nevada. We had a ball.
About mid-week, we drove to the other side of the lake to ski at Squaw Valley. The drive around Lake Tahoe was amazing, the turquoise-blue of the water mesmerizing.
When we got to the ski resort, we rented our ski equipment and enrolled our four-year-old son in ski school. The rest of us, including my parents and our two-year-old, rode the gondola to the restaurant about halfway up the mountain. After lunch, they drove back to Heavenly, and we spent the afternoon snow skiing.
Trouble On The Slopes
If you snow ski, you know the trails fall into three or four categories; green, blue, black diamond, and sometimes double black diamond. The green slopes are the most gentle, the easiest. Blue runs are for intermediate skiers (there was a time in my life when I could ski on a blue run). The black diamond runs are the most difficult and double-black diamond runs are for the experts.
As happens on many ski mountains, there was a lovely area of green runs towards the top of the mountain. The plan was to get me and my husband to that area where we could ski the afternoon away while my brother and his wife enjoyed the more challenging slopes. The only catch was you had to go all the way to the top before you could ski down to the gentle green area.
We rode the chairlift to the top, exited the lift without incident (which in itself was a miracle), and pointed our skis toward the gentle green area. That is when I froze. Literally.
My brother, sister-in-law, and husband glided their way down the mountain, stopped, and looked back up at me, waiting for me to join them. I’m not sure what they saw, but what I saw was a twelve-inch wide trail with at least a forty-five-degree angle at least a hundred yards to the bottom. To my left, jagged mountain peaks that went on to infinity, like a scene from The Lord Of The Rings. To the right, a double black diamond bowl where the skiers looked like tiny ants. One false move and I would either plunge to my death in the jagged mountains of doom or tumble into the bowl and turn into one of those snowballs that becomes larger and larger and move faster and faster until it explodes at the bottom of the hill. The only way to go was down the slope towards my family. But fear paralyzed me, tears included.
By now, you can probably guess that I have a vivid imagination. The run I needed to go down did have mountains on one side and a bowl on the other, but it was probably more like fifteen to twenty yards wide and only slightly steep. I simply needed to point my skis downhill, lean forward, and pizza wedge down if I needed to. But nope, I froze in fear in the middle of the path from the chairlift to the ski area. (I often wonder if there are some people in the country sitting around reminiscing about their ski trip to Squaw Valley in 1993 wondering whatever happened to that crazy woman blocking the ski run).
My family below yelled up words of encouragement, imploring me to come down the slope so we could continue our afternoon of skiing. They reminded me I was a decent skier and that I could do it. But I stayed put.
After a few minutes, my brother walked (on his skis) back up the hill to where I stood quivering with tears running down my face. He bent over, grabbed the tips of my skis, and pulled me down the hill while skiing backward. He was not a happy camper.
We successfully reached the bottom, and I dried my tears. He and my sister-in-law took off to the more difficult slopes and once I composed myself, my husband and I enjoyed the gentle green area. We did not meet up again until it was time to go home.
Lessons In The Things Of Life
I thought about that ski trip the other day. I’m not sure why—perhaps the fact that my brother was going snow skiing. The memory of my fear that day is palpable. I can still see that mountain range in my mind.
It made me think of my life today. There are so many alarming, frightening things happening in our world today—illnesses, war, natural disasters, social unrest, political division—the list goes on and on. Listening to the news can leave me frozen in fear, just like that time on top of the ski mountain. If I am not careful, I can let fear paralyze me.
That day on the mountain, all I had to do was focus on where I was going, let go of my fear, and trust that I would get down to my waiting family members. Sure, it was scary, and I may have fallen, but I would have gotten there eventually. Instead, I focused on my fears—the mountains of doom and the giant snow bowl of daring skiers. Not that the objects of my fears were not real. They were. And, if I had gone way off course, I probably would have hurt myself. But, the likelihood of that happening was tiny as long as I kept my eyes focused on the goal.
This memory was an important reminder for me, at this time of my life, to keep my eyes on the goal. And for me, that is Jesus. On my journey to him, there are and there will continue to be scary things that tempt me to freeze in fear. But, the important thing is to keep my focus on him in the middle of my fears. Oh, and sometimes it helps to have a little nudge to stay on track.
How about you? Have you ever experienced being frozen in fear? Did it help you to change your focus? I’d love to hear.
Kim Wilbanks 