What goes through your mind when your foot slips on wet rock and sends you flying through the air off a 30-foot cliff? Surprisingly, a lot.
I never thought that would be a sentence I could write in retrospect of my own life but I can. A week ago it would’ve been a sentence of fiction. Today, it’s an autobiography. A week ago, I slipped and fell 30 feet and honestly should not be here right now to write this story. But I’m here, and I remember a lot.
So what does go through your mind while you fall to the bottom of a waterfall with more fall than water? The exact opposite of what I just told you.
The whole thing maybe took half a second, but being the over-expander that I am, my mind naturally shoved as many words into my brain in that half second as it could, but none of them made me think like what I wrote above. My first thought was that it wasn’t even real–a phenomenon my mind judged to be its way of warning me what would happen if I weren’t more careful. But my mind was wrong. It wasn’t warning me of anything potential–it was processing something that was actually happening.
So my next thought was, “Holy crap, I really am falling.” Naturally, I’m a fixer. When there’s a problem, I look immediately for what I can do to fix it. But I couldn’t find anything. I was going to hit the bottom, and judging from the distance I’d spent about 5 minutes inspecting beforehand, I was going to die.
This is the part where most people’s stories would start changing directions. Some would scream. Some would panic. Some would call on their deity to save them and let them survive. But my reaction was unnatural even to me.
Scary things do a number on me. The very preview for Insidious 2 put me on the floor of the theater shaking like a leaf, and it was laughable. So, you know, you’d think the thought of dying would make me scream like a Roman Candle.
But I was peaceful.
“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7 NLT)
You don’t know how much it exceeds what you can understand until panic is the only thing that makes sense.
I can’t explain it. It flooded me. It comforted me, it took me to the ground just letting Him hold me and carry me all the way home.
And then I woke up. Except I was still at the bottom of that waterfall, on a rock, broken to pieces but breathing. Drenched in my own blood but crying out with a strength that didn’t make sense. I should’ve woken up with Him and my grandma and great grandma and my loved ones who’d already done the same surrounding me but I was surrounded by living friends, and strangers whose hearts were so huge and so beautiful that I could see them even though my mind was loopy and my short-term memory sucked. Thirty of them, volunteers who didn’t have to be there, surrounded me, got me on a stretcher, made me so comfortable, and carried me two and a half miles off that mountainside in Northwest Arkansas like I was their own son, or brother. Then they loaded me into a helicopter, and I had time to sleep.
Except I didn’t sleep. My mind just wouldn’t stop thinking. All I could focus on was that crazy peace. I was ready to go. Not that I wanted to, but that I saw no other option, and I was okay with the one that I saw. Jesus held me, all the way down.
You might be raising your hands, saying, “Wow, another Jesus story. Big deal. Miracles like that happen, it wouldn’t be the first time.” To which I would say, “Yeah, you’re right–they do.” But honestly, my own faith, though a part of my life for pretty much ever, wasn’t much of anything before that fall.
I let my life take over. Crazy schedules and workaholic-ness dominated my time. I was secretly addicted to pornography and didn’t want anyone to know. I spent no time with Jesus on my own outside of church services and the occasional sermon podcast. I wasn’t giving Him my whole heart the way I said I had, so this fall and my reaction therein didn’t have anything to do with my own faith being strong or anything like that. It sucked.
I had peace because He gave it to me.
And I learned something huge at the bottom of that waterfall:
“Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whoever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” (Matthew 21:44 HCSB)
Jesus used that fall to break me, literally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, whatever–He literally used that cliff to make this verse come to life in my story, and I’ve got months ahead to see what that looks like.
For now, it means resting in Him–remembering His grace and goodness, His sovereignty, His blessing, and His beauty. It means thanking Him night and day for not only sparing me on that mountain but surrounding me by such incredible, beautiful, people. It means remembering every single day that no matter how much just sitting on the couch watching Friends and House of Cards can eventually suck, I’m alive, and I’m going to walk on my own again. I’m going to get use of my arm back, and I’m going to recover 100%. None of that should be what I’m typing but it is, and He is merciful.
So falling off a 30-foot cliff can teach you a lot. Mainly, how small you are. I’d do wrong if I didn’t listen to it.
Ty Hirsch 