The stick stares me in the face. This was the ladder?! Going about 20 feet up the side of a solid rock face was a tiny little board with even smaller boards laying horizontally across it, put there by two rusty nails. This was the ladder. I put my hand on the first rung above my head, my right foot on the bottom rung and tested my weight. It creaks then shifts with my weight. Alright, this is going to be fun. I move to the next rung.
You’re probably wondering what’s going on here and why I’m wandering up a super unsafe ladder. Let me explain. My team and I had come to the town of Gua Musang for Christmas to spend it with another team for a few days. It is gorgeous here. There are huge rocky cliffs jutting up all over the place with rainforest crawling all over them. It didn’t make sense how they got there. Look at the picture; they’re so bizarre. Were they because we sat on a fault line? Did God put them here? I had no idea, but all I knew was that they were filled with caves and the explorer in me screamed to go traipse around in them.
With my band of merry (and slightly crazy) fellow adventurers, Cabe and Zach, we made it into a particularly large cave opening and had the option of going even deeper, but the trick was going up the stick ladder first. This cave was beyond beautiful and there was no way we were stopping now. So up we went. I kept going up the ladder rung by broken rung, my heart pounding ever faster. What made this even better was that the ladder stops before the top; a good three or four feet of slick, sloping rock face. I had a new pair of used old World Racer tennis shoes that were about the worst kind of shoes for climbing; yet here I was. I leaned off the ladder, gripping a tiny piece of mossy rock, took my feet off and placed them on the sloping rock. My foot slipped, my heart stopped, and I kept going. After about 30 seconds of slipping around and figuring out how not to fall 20 feet back down the ladder I made it over the lip and…had a ten foot drop down the other side to contend with.
I’ll spare you all the details of getting down but right after we had to push each other up a ten foot slick rock with no place to put your hands or feet. After more pounding hearts and almost falling we went in deeper. This cave was absolutely beautiful. It soared above us like a majestic cathedral with bats chirping around its ceiling. Brownish-white stalactites ran down the sides and from the roof. Every time we made it farther we would say to each other, “You have got to see this, it’s gorgeous,” in order to spur each other further. So further we went.
I had forgotten how great it felt to have dirt in your fingernails, to get your elbows scraped and bruised, to be covered in grime and be exhausted from the adrenaline rush. Somewhere along the way I had stopped living my boyhood dream of adventure and danger and was just now was realizing that. I had missed this so much. This realization also came partly from my reading of John Eldridge’s book Wild at Heart. In it he argues that society has trained men to lose their masculinity and their want and need for adventure and danger. I, for one, was so glad to find it again, even for these few hours.
I will admit that I was pretty scared throughout this adventure. I have done a fair amount of climbing in my college days and had gotten pretty good so I was excited to try my indoor skills out in the real world. It’s a lot different though when you don’t have any ropes or harnesses and horrible shoes.
It was in this fear of falling and unknown of how I would get back in one piece that I felt truly alive. I felt like a man. I was making mistakes, I was getting dirty and I was uncertain where my next step would be. The more my heart pounded, the more alive I felt. Any adrenaline junkie knows exactly the feeling that I’m talking about.
After climbing for about an hour, and after I was sufficiently covered in moss and red mud we started our descent back to the beginning. The worst part of climbing for me is going down. Going up is fine because you’re looking to the future, you aren’t seeing the long drop beneath you and the jagged rocks. Down is an entirely different story because you can see the long drop you’re facing the entire time, and it’s hard to see where to put your feet and hands. But onward (or downward) we went.
Suffice to say we made it down safely aside from a few crumbling rocks, some more human chains, a few slips, and a couple moments of panic when I had no idea where my next handhold or foothold would be or how I wouldn’t slip and fall in my shoes that felt like I was on ice. Through all this I kept trusting my ability, conquering my fears one step at a time, and trusting God would keep me safe. I’m sure God was watching us and reveling in the adventure we were having. After all, God loves excitement and danger and as C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he is good.”
This experience reminded me to keep trusting God in moments of fear. Whether that be while doing something dangerous, or confronting a friend about something you see that needs fixing in their life, or telling someone about Jesus. Whatever your fear may be, God is always right beside you holding you up and catching you when you fall. Sure, you may get bruised up and dirty when you’re facing your fears, but as long as you keep relying on Him and trusting that He cares for you, then you truly have nothing to fear.
So what is your fear? What is stopping you from living the adventure God has for you? Whatever it is, give it to God. Now get out there and climb something; get dirty. Just make sure you have a good rock to cling to before you take your feet off.
