Life is like a Zipline (and other lessons from mom)

It would be hard to put all that my mom taught me into one sentence, one paragraph, even one book.  So when I say my mom taught me that life is like a zipline, know that is not all she taught me, just one of the tidbits.  My mom never actually rode a zipline but she embraced life the way a zipline is designed to be embraced, fully.  Riding a zipline is optional, so is embracing life.  For me there is a certain amount of fear in climbing some stairs to walk a small wooden platform, from which I jump into the sky with nothing but a rope harnessed about my waist.  I almost did not do it.  In the end I did, the rope held, and I walked away with a spectacular view, a beauty I might have missed.  

My mom was one to embrace life, to enjoy the beauty surrounding her, to cherish the relationships she had.  She embraced the days of sunshine but she also embraced the days it rained.  She trusted Jesus more than you trust a rope on a zipline to keep her safe.  Ropes can fail you, Jesus will not; because she trusted Him she could embrace life even when circumstances beckoned her to fear or retreat.  It was not that my mom was born with a fearless heart, it was that she had been reborn to new life in Christ Jesus.  Her new life made her a child of God, who tells His children over a hundred times in the bible not to worry or to be afraid.  She had fears and worries but she knew what to do with them-

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                             (I Peter 5:6,7 ESV, emphasis added)

My mom counted her blessings rather than her trials and it made life a lot more fun for all of us.  When you trust you are blessed, you live as if you are even when you do not feel it; when you live this way eventually the feeling returns.  If we planned a trip to the zoo and it rained my mom  would find a museum instead.  If she could not run on the beach, she would sit on the deck and take in the sunset.  She rarely passed up the chance to split dessert; after all, life is uncertain, and if you cannot enjoy the life you have been given, who will?  

For me, the hardest part of the zipline was waiting in line on the rickety stairway leading to the platform.  I am not fond of heights and there are not a lot of comfortable places to look when you are that high off of the ground.  Life is not always comfortable.  Up is the best place to look, it takes your focus off what might be ahead or what is below.  It is where you find grace in the waiting.

“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” ( Isaiah 40:29,30)ESV

Sometimes there is a top rope you can hold when you ride a zipline, the top rope is not the rope that actually holds you.  I was told I could hold that rope but I did not need to, my harness would hold.  My first run on the zipline I held that top rope like my life depended on it.  On my second run I let go, rather than rope burn I got to experience a fresh breeze flowing through my palms.

Sometimes life is like that, holding on causes more pain than letting go.  It is hard to let go.  It is hard to say goodbye to my mom this side of Heaven.  It is hard to let go of my dreams.  It is hard to be pruned, as the branches of my heart not bearing fruit for God’s kingdom often need to be.  Life can be hard but it is not forever and Heaven is real.

The week before my mom died she talked, as she often did, about Heaven.  She even told her bible study group in passing that she wanted the description of Heaven in Revelations read at her funeral.  She cut out copies of a “Coping Toolbox” and put them in envelopes for my sister and I.  Then when my brother opened up her church directory the day after she died he found a post it note with this quote on it-

”Grief is the last act of love we can give to those we loved.  Where there is deep grief, there was great love.”

So we see God’s hand prints all over the suddenness of her passing.  She did not know that for her Heaven was so close, but God knew.  He completed His work in her life, and we can honestly say, she left nothing undone.  Would we take another day?  Of course we would.  She would not.  She loved us indeed, but she loved God more.  If we could behold God, the way she can behold Him right now, we would not choose the brightest of days here either.  My mom lived a life of grace.  She accepted grace as a gift from Heaven and she passed it along.  

When your heart is in Heaven it frees you up from the things of this earth.  That is not to say you no longer embrace the gifts God offers here,  it is to say you embrace more deeply the gifts because you know the Giver of all good things.  When you understand that God’s goodness experienced this side of Heaven is just a foretaste of things to come, you hunger for more of God; you find more of God, both in what you can touch and see and feel and what you can not.  You let go of what you cannot hold and you rest in the arms of the One who holds you.

If life is like a zipline, I want to be in it for more than the ride.  I want to enjoy it, savor it for all it was meant to be.  Most importantly I want to be held by the One in whose arms I am secure, the One who will carry me safely to the Other Side.  Like a zipline ride, before we know it, life will be over.  For those whose lives are in the Everlasting Arms, this is not sad, it is wonderful.  In Heaven we will behold God face to face, and Heaven is forever.  In the end what my mom really taught me, is that life is more than a zipline, and oh so much more.    

kls

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death  shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.  And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’  Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’  And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  To the thirsty I will give from the springs of the water of life without payment.  The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”      Revelations 21:1-7 (ESV)