Sometimes you just gotta jump.
Gotta trust and risk and let go. Have to change and move forward and choose.
Sometimes you just need to step into the arena.
And, maybe, at the beginning, you’ll not know what to expect. Maybe there will be stars in your eyes and dreams in your head, but maybe that’s okay. Perhaps the idealism is a gift that urges you onto the platform in the first place.
But then you tie and secure and double-check the ropes. You plan and prepare and pray as best you know how. You use your mind and your hands, and you ready yourself to leap free-falling into air.
And in the moments {or days or years} before the jump, you will taste both giddy expectation and anxious fear. Your fingers will hover over the harness and your feet may shuffle towards the ladder, and the way back down,
to stable and safe and known.
But, time moves us forward, and platform-living doesn’t really make a life. There comes a moment when all the talking, all the planning, all the praying, all the conversation culminates into
A choice. A step. A leap of faith.
And you close your eyes. And maybe hold your breath. And shoot off a desperate prayer. And you commit.
And then you jump.
And, oftentimes, it is
Absolutely. Terrifying.
And after the leap, you find yourself all-in and out-of-your-own-control.
Completely dependent on the One holding the rope, the One who called to you in the first place.
And though the leap itself is yours and yours alone,
the jump is always richer when lived out in Community.
Shared with people who feel the fear of before and the wind of after. With others who, if you’re lucky, jump at the same time.
Shared with people that know your story and can hand it back to you.
People that are brave enough to speak truth and are present enough to know when to speak it.
People that love, anyway.
And perhaps it is family. Or friends. Or partners. Or teammates. Or even connections over wires.
But the journey, the jump, is always, always better when shared.
Because fly and thrive or crash and burn,
the leap will always leave you forever changed.
Forever. Changed.
And perhaps the status quo isn’t something to cling to so tightly, after all.
Matt and our interns spent a day last week enjoying the Flight of the Gibbon here in Chiang Mai. It was one of the team-building highlights of the trip, thus far. You can read more about their own experiences on several of their personal blogs: Caitlin, Ben, and Kelly.
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Are you being asked to jump into anything new right now? A relationship, a move, a new job, a different season, a transition?
