Bronzed, Muscled, and Beautiful! Um, right.

Photo by Mark Alway.
See more ministry pictures at www.markalway.com


I got an email from Suzanne just before I left for my first weekend of raft guide training on Friday, and she wrote, "heather, you are going to be a brave and fearless river rafting guide! hurrah! you know what this means??! you will truly be my river rafting guide from my youth group senior trip. our guide was this attractive, funny, confident, tan, strong amazing chica and i remember sitting in my damp life vest thinking "wowwww" of her. she was so impressive. and soon YOU will be her. ha!"

I got all excited inside at the super romanticized image of bronzed, muscled me, perched atop the back of a raft, confidently yelling out commands to timid and scared Junior High girls, assuring them that we would make it through the white water, and then getting to revel in the moment at the bottom of the rapids, when they have performed so well in the midst of the torrents.

After this weekend, returning home freezing cold, smelling of soggy Neoprene, with arms so sore that I was unable to effectively open the wrapper on my Granola Bar, I know that I am still many days away from being "Glorifyingly bronzed, rippingly muscled, and beautifully confident Raft Girl." The process is much longer than I perceived that it would be...which is fine...it just means that it will be a lot of work.

So far though--I'm doing a pretty good job. I can read the water well. I can read the currents. I know where the water's going and what's going to happen to us when we get there. I even know which way the boat is supposed to go to defeat the currents and to use the currents to my advantage.

What I do NOT know how to do--is to be brawny. Both of my trainers from yesterday, after two runs down the river said, "Heather. You need to be more aggressive." To which I weakly respond "I AAAAM..." and then poutingly look at the little twigs I call arms.

I am not an aggressive person by nature. I can effectively tell stories in which I sound very assertive and aggressive, but when it comes down to ME and the RIVER, I constantly think through everything, evaluate it all, and then submissively ask my trainer, "Is that right?" A few times...they would say..."I don't know. Let's see what happens." And I'm thinking, "Great. I'm going to look like a BIG IDIOT!"

So what have I learned about myself and the craft of whitewater rafting over the past two days?
#1--I hate looking like an idiot.
#2--In order to learn how to be a Whitewater Rafting Guide, you pretty much have to look like an idiot.
#3--Even when I think I look like an idiot, no one really thinks i AM an idiot, because they all remember back in the day when they looked like idiots themselves.
#4--The longer you look like an idiot in the process of learning an extremely difficult task, the more rewarding it's going to feel when you realize you actually ARE good at what you're doing and DO NOT look like an idiot any longer.
#5--God often appoints people who seem incapable of doing things to actually do them extremely well because then, at the end of it all, they are so overshadowed at what God has done through them, that they fall down in praise.