DO IT AFRAID
Sometimes you have to do it afraid.
This is a universal truth, but we often believe we’re the only one.
Last month my little family escaped our gloomy winter Oregon weather to soak up some vitamin D in the sunny California desert. It was a glorious four days filled with sunshine, meals I did not have to prepare, and true to our family vacation routine, a hike.
If you sat with me today as I reminisce over the pictures of our trip, you would see a beautiful panorama taken atop a ridge line peak and a smiling family photo with blue skies and a distant sprawling city in the backdrop. What you would not see is that I was afraid.
Our last desert family hike had not gone well.
Only a couple miles into an eight mile loop I had forced my family to turn back. While I have yet to determine if I have a fear of heights or simply a fear that one of my children will go tumbling off of them, as we stopped for snacks along the Boo Hoff trail in the winter of 2022, I realized I could go no further.
It was the most challenging hike we had ever attempted, we even passed a cross at the main entrance to the trailhead. People had died out there and as my boys insisted on edging closer and closer to peer over the cliffs, I could no longer take the thought that my flesh and blood could be one of them.
In a moment where my body threatened to slip beyond the control of my mind I told my family our hike was over. My nervous system was hedging dangerously close to my first panic attack and I simply had to get off the mountain.
That day I showed them that sometimes you try and fail.
But my boys were now two years older and with our youngest occupied on a team basketball trip it would only by our 18-year-old joining us on the mountain. I would essentially be hiking alongside two grown men and I was sure fear would stay at bay. I was wrong.
Only minutes into the hike my son decided to scale an off-trail boulder, the world falling off from view behind him. I had to look away to steady to the wave of nausea and spent the next ten minutes wondering why I had not taken a Xanax before we began.
1,300 feet in elevation gain doesn’t sound like much when you’re scrolling through hikes from the comfort of your couch, but the ant-sized humans perched far long the path my feet were taking made fear instantly real.
But sometimes you do it afraid.
Which is what I did, settling my nerves at times to take in the view, focusing intently at other moments to keep my attention solely on the ground in front of my feet. It was a dance between effort and excitement, a tug-of-war between adventure and the crushing reality of being afraid.
But that day I showed them that sometimes you’re afraid and do it anyway.
That night we met with friends for happy hour. We talked of the hike, but my struggles on the mountain were not mentioned. It’s funny how we do that, refuse to let others see only to find ourselves feeling all alone.
And so my true story lives here. And I’m reminded that like my hike, the day-to-day requirements of work and family and life often demand more than we believe we can offer. Fear then becomes a likely companion.
And so we do it afraid.
And remind ourselves that we are not the only one.