A Short Fall

Dave Brisbin 9.15.24 Made a decision to turn our lives and will over to God, a power greater than ourselves…Step Three of AA…sort of a let go and let God. Sounds so easy, but it’s only as easy as our grip on whatever we’re holding on to. And if we believe we’re holding on to the only way we’ll ever experience security and survival, affection and esteem, power and control—just how easy a grip are we expecting? I remember a scene from a movie where a man is dangling off a cliff, clinging to the end of a rope with those at the top calling down to let go. He’s screaming back, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted. Exhausted, he finally lets go and falls about eighteen inches, lands in sitting position. That’s each and every one of us, clinging for dear life to illusions of power and control that blind us to the fact that in God’s care, it’s a very short fall. Once upon a time, I went skydiving. Jumped out of a plane at 12,500 feet with a bedsheet in a pack on my back. I decided to turn my life (literally) over to the care of those around me, the greater power that said I could survive the fall. I had to trust the people who taught me and packed my gear enough to jump, but couldn’t prove them trustworthy until I did. Classic Catch-22. How did I gain enough trust to let go? It started early in the morning with the decision to drive to the center, to sign the legal release of liability, to attend each class all day long about the gear and techniques that would brake my fall. Gearing up with jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, getting on the plane—each small act taken as if I believed I could survive, made the next act possible until I was staring out at two miles of air... As in skydiving, so in life. Belief is not enough. We won’t let go until we trust enough. But trust is experiential, only exists after we act on our beliefs. That’s faith—acting as if what we say we believe is already true. Faith is the bridge between belief and trust. We start small, day by day, in every living moment, until we’re staring down a sheer drop that after a deep breath, faith lets us realize is only eighteen inches. We can let go for a short fall like that.