I stood at the pinnacle of my hopes and dreams. This was it……this would be the day I conquered my fear. I could see my Mom in the background with her camera, ready to capture my big moment.
I took a deep breath as I grabbed for the first bar with my right hand and then my left.
“Rachel, you can do it!” Mom and Dad cheered me on. “Go Rachel!”
With a shaky right hand, I grabbed for the next bar, barely making contact.
What if I fall? The ground is so far away. Don’t look down, don’t look down. I told myself, focusing in on the bars ahead.
Channeling my inner Ninja Warrior, I reached the next bar and then the next and then before I knew it, I had reached the end of the Monkey Bars!
“I did it!” I jumped up and down. “Did you see that? That was so cool.”
I felt like I had conquered the world. I mean the monkey bars! This was big stuff.
I would like to say that I conquered all my fears that day, like that was my big moment, and then boom, I would be known as “Rachel aka Pink Power Ranger,” (Back in the day, I thought she was fearless), but I was never assigned this nickname because of my outstanding bravery.
No, I never have been the brave one. Just ask my friend Brette. She has always been good at getting me out of my comfort zone. We were excited to run in a “Fun” 5k. Did I mention there was an inflatable slide that would drop us at a 90 degree angle! Quite frightening for a girl terrified of heights. When we approached the park, you could see this obstacle for miles!
Now, the slide was at the very end. Maybe I’ll just skip out on that obstacle.
I suggested to Brette that maybe she should just go down the slide without me. But she insisted that we had to go on that obstacle together.
“Ok,” I dutifully agreed.
Finally, we reached the giant slide. This was it. We both began to climb up the slide. That climb took too little time and soon we were at the top.
Wow, this is super high. Yikes.
Before I could talk myself out of it, there was a guy counting us down. “3,2,1….Go!”
And then I shot down the slide at a pace so fast I wasn’t sure if I was even breathing and then splash! I was in the little pool at the end of the slide! I had conquered that big slide!
My Fears have not just been about monkey bars and giant slides….Actually, I have a plethora of fears…
When my mom passed away, I was faced with all new kinds of fear. I especially feared writing. Grief is weird like that. Writing had always been my constant friend. Even through my mom’s cancer diagnosis, I continued to write.
I started my senior year of college with optimism. Mom would be ok. I just knew God would heal her and then I could write about the miracle and how in the most unlikely of circumstances, God came through! Stage IV Cancer gone! Sounded like a best seller to me!
A little over a month before my graduation, I was talking on the phone with my mom. She sounded so tired and I can’t even remember the conversation. All I can remember is the realization that mom was too weak to make my college graduation…She had sacrificed so much for me to go to college and she wasn’t going to be able to see me walk across the stage….and she certainly wouldn’t make the culmination of my college writing career:my portfolio reading, being in just a few days.
On April 1st, I got a call from Dad. His somber voice told me it was not good. “Rachel, we met with hospice today. There’s nothing more they can do. I think you and Sarah need to come home. Your mom’s very close….”
April 1 was also my portfolio reading…..I wondered, Should I just skip it and get the earliest flight out? No, that’s not what mom would want.
I still have no answers how I got through that day…telling my sister was difficult. Soon, Sarah and I were in the student life office, explaining our situation.I felt like a wreck..how was I going to do this portfolio reading?
God and my friends that’s how I forged through that day. More about that later 🙂
Just ten days after my dad’s initial phone call, my sweet mom went to meet Jesus. It’s hard to explain but it’s like time stood still. The world around me was moving on, but I wasn’t ready for that. How could it just move on when such an important person was gone?
After finishing the semester and graduation, I moved back home. Writing now became my bitter acquaintance. At times it was just too much to write about the pain I was feeling, I didn’t want to write about it, and I surely didn’t want to talk about. I felt like I needed to be strong for my family. Writing scared me because it forced me to be vulnerable. It forced to be real and admit that no, I was not ok.
But (you had to know this was coming, I mean you are reading a blog post that I wrote. Oops getting sidetracked. Back to it.) slowly my love for writing was renewed. It didn’t happen in one day. And I can’t wait to tell the rest of the story.
So you may ask, “Have you now conquered your fear of writing?”
My aswer, No! Writing still scares me, and being vulnerable really scares me! But being brave I’ve learned isn’t so much about conquering fear as much as it is about facing it.
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