Survivors of suicide attempts off the Golden Gate Bridge have said that as they were falling, they suddenly realized how much they actually wanted to live. I've never jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge myself, but after cliff jumping for the first time yesterday, I feel like I understand those freeze-frame seconds of mid-air regret much too well.
Honestly, when I heard we were going cliff jumping, I was pretty stoked. My sister and her friends had gone a few weeks before, and she wanted to go out again with our family. I appreciate adventure and the idea of getting outside my comfort zone, so I was down for the plan.
But two hours, a twenty-minute canoe ride, and a half-hour of freezing cold water later, and I wasn't as excited about the prospects anymore. As I looked up at the cliff I was supposed to jump off of, I guessed that it was probably about thirty feet or so. (I could've been way off though; I'm bad at estimation.) Not too bad, I thought, this will be a piece of cake.
On reaching the top of the cliff, I discovered two things: one, what looks like thirty feet from the ground looks a lot more like 80 feet when you're standing on top of it with the intention to jump; and two, when I told myself it would be a piece of cake, I had apparently been describing the kind of cake that's been in the oven way too long and would break your teeth if you tried it.
But although you can say I'm pretty stupid, no one can say I'm a wimp, because armed with the knowledge that I could very possibly be eaten by a fish or die and sink to the bottom of the lake where I would never be heard from again, I said a prayer (or somehow several at once), took a running start, and jumped.
It took way longer than it should have for me to hit the water.
You know that moment in movies where everything goes really quiet and plays in slow-motion, and all you can hear is the sound of a heart pumping really loudly? Yeah, that's pretty much what it was like. It was four seconds of complete silence and one panicky thought: I should never have done this. I guess having zero control over anything at all and being completely subject to gravity and the elements isn't something I particularly enjoy.
And then I hit the water, and as sound filled my ears again, I became incredibly happy upon finding that I had somehow miraculously not died.
I guess hindsight does some weird stuff to your brain, because the next thought I had after being amazed at my almost impossible survival was, wow, that was a piece of cake!, and I was thinking along the lines of really good cake, not disgusting burnt cake.
Thinking about my brush with death reminds me a lot about my relationship with Jesus.
A lot of the time, when Jesus calls me to do something, the concept doesn't sound that bad. I like thinking about the idea of fearlessly trusting God in whatever He asks from me. I might even laugh a bit at how easy the task looks. But once I think about everything involved, and all the risks I'll have to take, I start to second-guess just how eager I really am to jump in.
It's hard to jump out into a place where I have no control. Even when I know Jesus will catch me, it's easy to hesitate. Most of the time, I don't even know where I'll land, and Jesus wants me to just jump into some misty, unknown area and trust that He's got a plan.
So then I finally jump, and you'd think that I would feel relief for having finally made the decision, but instead I panic because I just gave God every area of my life, and I'm not sure if I really want to lose total control.
But if I just let myself fall, I'll land in God's massive love for me. And as soon as I land, I realize that the jump wasn't actually that bad - you could even call it fun - because God was guiding me all along.
The place God calls me to jump into isn't without its dangers. Most of the time, I don't even know where the jump will take me. But in the end, it's always an amazing place that blows my mind for how beautiful it is, and melts my heart for how much I'm loved, and you know, even when I don't know all the specifics, that's a place I want to be.
So today, I'm going to take the jump.
And it's going to be so worth it.