My Daughter and Rock Walls
On August 17th, my daughter Rachel took a fall and hit her head on a rock. There was more to it than that actually. She was rock climbing near Fort Collins, Colorado with some rock-climbing buddies, apparently leading the route up the rock, when her attempt to place a piece in the rock failed, and she fell the six feet she had reached to and the additional six feet below her last placement. Her head struck the rock wall at the end of the fall, but she did not suffer amnesia, and finished the route despite a raging headache. She was not wearing a helmet. The week before she had taken a twenty foot fall, banging her back against the rock wall as swung back and forth. She was wearing a helmet that time.
The voice message on my cell phone said, “Mom, I don’t want to scare you but….”
Her voice was thick and low and pain- filled. My stomach tightens and I am filled with fear of what the next sentence will bring. My mind races and I realize that she is well enough to call, and I listen poised and tense, yet already knowing that she will be alright. Someday, I half expect, I will be caring for her, or grieving for her. Someday, she will fall over the edge that she lives on and there may not be a thin rope to catch her.
I really do love the concept of climbing up rock walls. Like a little child putting his hands all over his father’s face – fingers exploring his mouth, searching the crevices of his ears and the holes in his nose, feeling the contours of his face in a joyful intimacy – is a person on a rock face. So small compared with the looming height; so fragile compared to the solid mass.
Having a relationship with the natural world means experiencing its’ beauty, strength and grandeur; being out there and in it, like swimming in the rain. One becomes part of the water around them and one with the water that falls from the sky. Typically humans retreat to warm dry places when it rains, but there is a joyous connection that happens when we join nature on nature’s terms and sacrifice our comforts. Many people sweat and endure sore muscles to climb a mountain peak, not only for the view from the top, but for the challenge and experience of joining the mountain in its’ day, seeing it’s hidden parts, walking on its’ shoulders. Rock climbers take the challenge and thrill one step further to places that seem forbidden places, the same loves driving them perhaps.
“David and I are responsible, “ I think to myself with a rye smile. We set this kid on this path, and just never dreamed that she would run so far and fast on it. We started her hiking and backpacking and wilderness camping at a young age; we planted in her that wild love of natural things, that natural love of wild things. I would not change all that. We watched her fly from rope swings into lake water or river water with great glee when she was still young. However this element of danger is increasingly present and I wonder about what drives it and how it will end. I really don’t know.
In my most instructive book, God likens Himself to a rock, I suppose because rocks are solid and immoveable, and yet I find several places where God is moved by humans. I read, “Fall upon the rock and be broken,” and I hear Jesus’ words as an invitation to let our hard hearts to broken apart on His chest. He is safe to bleed on; He can bear it all because He is strong and solid as well as compassionate. This picture that I have of my daughter dangling on the end of a rope, smashing herself against a Colorado rock, I have to combine with my picture of Jesus being the Rock there in Colorado that she is smashing herself against. I have to picture Him holding her, broken and hurting. It is not only my imagination, it is my prayer. It’s the only way I can get through these fears that she will destroy herself.
On August 17th, my daughter Rachel took a fall and hit her head on a rock. There was more to it than that actually. She was rock climbing near Fort Collins, Colorado with some rock-climbing buddies, apparently leading the route up the rock, when her attempt to place a piece in the rock failed, and she fell the six feet she had reached to and the additional six feet below her last placement. Her head struck the rock wall at the end of the fall, but she did not suffer amnesia, and finished the route despite a raging headache. She was not wearing a helmet. The week before she had taken a twenty foot fall, banging her back against the rock wall as swung back and forth. She was wearing a helmet that time.
The voice message on my cell phone said, “Mom, I don’t want to scare you but….”
Her voice was thick and low and pain- filled. My stomach tightens and I am filled with fear of what the next sentence will bring. My mind races and I realize that she is well enough to call, and I listen poised and tense, yet already knowing that she will be alright. Someday, I half expect, I will be caring for her, or grieving for her. Someday, she will fall over the edge that she lives on and there may not be a thin rope to catch her.
I really do love the concept of climbing up rock walls. Like a little child putting his hands all over his father’s face – fingers exploring his mouth, searching the crevices of his ears and the holes in his nose, feeling the contours of his face in a joyful intimacy – is a person on a rock face. So small compared with the looming height; so fragile compared to the solid mass.
Having a relationship with the natural world means experiencing its’ beauty, strength and grandeur; being out there and in it, like swimming in the rain. One becomes part of the water around them and one with the water that falls from the sky. Typically humans retreat to warm dry places when it rains, but there is a joyous connection that happens when we join nature on nature’s terms and sacrifice our comforts. Many people sweat and endure sore muscles to climb a mountain peak, not only for the view from the top, but for the challenge and experience of joining the mountain in its’ day, seeing it’s hidden parts, walking on its’ shoulders. Rock climbers take the challenge and thrill one step further to places that seem forbidden places, the same loves driving them perhaps.
“David and I are responsible, “ I think to myself with a rye smile. We set this kid on this path, and just never dreamed that she would run so far and fast on it. We started her hiking and backpacking and wilderness camping at a young age; we planted in her that wild love of natural things, that natural love of wild things. I would not change all that. We watched her fly from rope swings into lake water or river water with great glee when she was still young. However this element of danger is increasingly present and I wonder about what drives it and how it will end. I really don’t know.
In my most instructive book, God likens Himself to a rock, I suppose because rocks are solid and immoveable, and yet I find several places where God is moved by humans. I read, “Fall upon the rock and be broken,” and I hear Jesus’ words as an invitation to let our hard hearts to broken apart on His chest. He is safe to bleed on; He can bear it all because He is strong and solid as well as compassionate. This picture that I have of my daughter dangling on the end of a rope, smashing herself against a Colorado rock, I have to combine with my picture of Jesus being the Rock there in Colorado that she is smashing herself against. I have to picture Him holding her, broken and hurting. It is not only my imagination, it is my prayer. It’s the only way I can get through these fears that she will destroy herself.
1 comment:
That last paragraph is especially poignant, judging by a couple of stray tears I find on my face--we do have to accept that "His ways are higher than our ways" don't we...
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