Leap

I went cliff diving for the first time this year. There's a lake about an hour away from school that students frequent to spend sunny days on the shore, and more importantly, jump from the infamous cliffs. As a senior, we felt it our duty to finally check this adventure off our bucket list. So last semester, my 4 best friends and I packed up may car, drove to a camp site near the lake that we'd found online, arrived after dark to set up camp and make s'mores. It was fantastic! Quite the bonding experience figuring out, as 5 only slightly outdoorsy girls, how to set up our rented tent and start a fire. But we did it, and The Lord said "It is good." We slept only slightly off the sharp rocks for the night, doing the continual skootch back to the middle of the tent after sliding in our sleeping bags down the incline we'd pitched the tent on. And in the morning, as the sun peeked through the trees above us,

 we got up (for once, not only was I not the last one asleep but I actually got up before everyone else! Quite a victory if you know me well) and made pancakes using a skillet we had ingeniously thought ahead to pack, and some cardboard for the spatula we so ingeniously forgot to pack. After a healthy breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes, we packed up, figured out how to pay for our camp site, and headed to the lake!

As none of us had been before, we drove around slightly confused for a few minutes before finally seeing what we could only assume were THE cliffs! As we dropped our belongings onto a nearby picnic table, we excitedly took a picture with the lake as our backdrop and then headed to the edge. 

Crossing the threshold from gravel-y ground to rock-form made the impending feat amazingly realistic. Finally, after 4 years of hearing about cliff jumping, I was about to take on the task! We approached the edge, and suddenly every imaginable worst-case-scenario rushed through my mind.

"What if I trip and fall and go tumbling to my doom?" "What if I don't make it far enough out and crack my skull open, leaving my best friends staring down at my limp corpse?!" "What if I hit the water at the wrong angle and the water goes inside my body and makes my insides explode like the guy on 1000 Ways to Die?" And suddenly cliff jumping was not so appealing. I always used to think I had a fear of heights, like any respectable human, but I've come to realize the past couple years that I have a fear of falling. That moment when suddenly nothing is beneath you and you don't know if you'll ever know what it's like to have something beneath your feet again; no thank you. But here I was, and there was no way I could chicken out. I had to do this. Thousands of other students before me had jumped and survived. And so, after watching my more brave counterparts jump ahead of me, I focused on them in the water, stood at the edge of the cliff and pushed myself into the temporary nothingness. I felt like I was in the air for many minutes before I finally felt the cold water swallow me up, but as I kicked my way to the surface, I heard the cheers from my friends and I knew I did it! I leaped into uncertainty, trusting that my feet could propel me far enough away from the sharp cliff edge, fell through the nothingness for what felt like an eternity, and finally landed in the water near my friends, thus allowing me to become a true Harding student!

In 18 days, I will join with a few hundred other students in the Benson Auditorium. I will "close my Harding chapter", "complete my education", and "step into the real word". Yes, I'm nervous. Yes, I'm excited. But I am trusting that God will prepare my feet to move far enough from the sharp edge and that after falling a short time, He will swallow me up in a new chapter of life. I am facing one of the scariest, most thrilling cliffs of my life.

And here.

I.

Go.....