What Water?

Later this morning I will be standing on a tee box looking at a green 120 yards away.  I will be playing a wily opponent in the second round of a single-elimination tournament.  Normally hitting the ball 120 yards is relatively easy, even for someone like me.  But, this particular hole I have been envisioning as a potential turning point in the match has one big hazard: a 50 yard long pond between the tee and the green.  I have been playing this course for over a decade, and yet every time I come to this hole I start to wonder if I should take “more club” so I can be sure to hit it over the water.  Over the course of time I have developed this little bit of self-talk as I approach the hole; “What water?”  As my sub-conscious brain tells me to strategize how to clear the water my conscious brain is telling myself, “what water? There’s nothing to fear!”

This is not just a problem for human beings.  I am reminded of the time I was training with a horse for a horse show competition. We were practicing on the concrete parking lot outside the coliseum where soon we, my horse and I, would enter and compete.  One of the event’s challenges was for me to ride the horse to the edge of a pool of water, get off and to lead the horse through it. So, my “trainers” had put a blue tarp down in the parking lot to simulate the water. As I rode the horse toward the simulated water the horse reared up and threw me off its back and onto my backside on the concrete. After which  I was told how to keep the horse’s attention on something other than the water. Thanks for the timely advice!

What reminded me of these stories of dealing with our fears was a story I read about a legally blind pole vaulter, Charlotte Brown of Emory, Texas. (SI 5.26.14)  She is unable to distinguish color or to judge distance, so in order to perform her feat she counts her steps up to the launching points and she relies on technology to tell her if she is near the box into which she needs to insert the pole. She recently launched herself 11 feet into the air. How? “I’m not scared, because I can’t see how high the bar is or how small the box is…I think our fears are  illusions, they’re not real. We just think they are.”  Like I said, “what water?”

Is there some fear you need to conquer this week?  Pray for vision which sees beyond the obstacle you fear. May God grant you the ability to see only the joy of victory.