Fearlessness: O The Places You'll Go!

The text read:

Hey, I was gonna go skydiving tomorrow, but wanted to make sure y’all were cool with it before I bought the ticket.

Let me back up and set the scene:

It had been a long week. Work pressures had been high. At home, we had been staying up late every night dealing with one thing or another. That morning, a Saturday, we had woken up far earlier than normal to get ourselves out the door and on the road for the hour-and-a-half trip to attend the funeral of a long-time friend who had suddenly passed away. It was 7:30am; we had been on the road for 30 minutes.

Our phones dinged the signal that meant our daughter had sent Dan and I that opening text.

So nonchalant. So matter-of-fact. Hey, guys, I was thinking maybe I’d go throw myself out the door of an airplane at 18,000 feet tomorrow. You good with that?  No, I hadn’t spent days or weeks discussing this with anyone. Nope, the desire to do this hadn’t been on anyone’s radar. But I realized that I had the time and funds, I haven’t done anything just for fun lately, it’s been a pressure cooker this week, and Groupon had a deal, so…

The crazy thing is that this wasn’t an out-of-character thought process for our 18-year-old daughter. This is par for the course; honestly, it’s par for the course with all our adult kids. It’s one of the things that they have taught their parents over the years. We taught them that because of Who God is, they don’t have to be afraid. We taught them that when God puts something in their path to do – whether it is risky work for the Kingdom’s sake, a need in a person’s life that they can pour into, or an opportunity to step into rest and joy that He provides – to step into it fully, decisively, and quickly because those opportunities pass by if you don’t. We taught them that it’s important to go into things with clear thinking, but that risky doesn’t always mean bad. We taught them that living in the freedom that Jesus affords is worth the risks. They taught us that those things were truer and deeper than we had realized.

With that text, our daughter invited us to join her in fearlessness. She gave us the opportunity to trust God and trust her. She opened up a moment of choice. She’s a legal adult who had no obligation to ask us our opinion of her plans, but because of our relationship, she wanted to both inform us and give us opportunity to voice our opinion. Here’s the kicker: had we been upset or negative about it, she likely would have passed on the experience. She would have been disappointed, probably angry that we clipped her wings that way, but she would have found another activity for the day.

Y’all. I’m so glad that we took a breath and trusted. I’m so grateful that just because WE wouldn’t have chosen to skydive, we didn’t tell her that SHE couldn’t. It guts me to think what would have been lost if we had let the stressors of our week steal that opportunity from her. We teach our kids Who God is. We tell them that fear doesn’t have to be the force that makes their decisions. We want them brave. Bold. Confident. “Dragon slayers in a time when there are actual dragons,” as my mom once put it.

​At some point, the students become the teachers. They take the principles we have spoken into their lives and live them out on a level that leaves us in awe. When they do, we get to share the joy. The overcoming. The encouragement to walk more fully in Truth ourselves.