A Shindiggity Non-Sled Ride.

I have just logged weekend #3 for the year spent on the new YD Camp Property--Stonewater Ranch. I LOVE THIS PLACE! and I cannot wait to see hundreds and thousands of kids flowing through that piece of property, because it is a place that so easily invites you to love God better.

Yesterday was my first encounter with the official "Stonewater Ranch Sledding Hill," of which I have heard many stories but had never scoped out. The thing is ginormous...and apparantly extremely dangerous, especially if you start clear at the top, where it's steepest, and hit the jump that the kids build at the bottom.

I was hesitant to go, because I'm terribly afraid of sledding. I think this is based solely on my 14th birthday, when I went sledding at my cousins' farm and spent most of the afternoon waist-deep in snow drifts and entangled in barbed wire fences. The experience has somehow become legend in my memory as something that was supposed to be fun, but in which I instead became an immobile scraped-up human popsicle. I'm convinced that my body temperature was permanently lowered just as a result of that one day of sledding.

Anyways--I had to climb the sledding hill yesterday, because we were meeting for a worship service at the top of the ridge to close out our weekend retreat. The retreat, called "Big Shindig," is the official kickoff to the YD Adventures season. Since I was in the midst of outdoor professionals, I don't lightly say, "I'm terribly terrified of sledding, sledding, hills, plastic sleds. And in fact--sled itself is a 4-letter word in my vocabulary."

Instead...I just climb up the sledding hill to go worship God...

On the way back down, after a wonderful time of prayer and reflection, I was gripping the sleeping pad on which I'd been sitting, ever so tempted to launch head-first down the hill and erase all bad connotations with the concept of sledding. This is ironic, because I had just shared with our group that I didn't want God to use my weaknesses--I wanted him to use my strengths. Suddenly--I'm pummeled with the irony of it all saying, "Heather...you could use your weakness and sled down this hill and use it as a powerful spiritual metaphor."

I, however, as always, wussed out and walked down the hill like most everyone else...and on the ride home, as friends shared exciting stories of sledding gone awry, I just moped in my own wussiness.

I don't know that this story has a point, other than to say, sometimes I really wuss out and miss a grand adventure and write it off as "I'm an artist...I'm a singer...I'm a writer...I'm not an adventurer.." which is really to say, "I don't like to be wet and uncomfortable and in pain just for the sake of adventure..."

Which suddenly makes me so glad--that for some reason--I open myself to be challenged as a Whitewater Rafting Guide. Suddenly, something that seems so very much the opposite of what I am becomes a central piece of who I am...and I know that God is refining me.

2 Cor 12:9: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may reside in me."