Recently I was reflecting on my adventures as a beginner snow skier. I was in high school when I went skiing for the first time at Boreal Mountain Resort, in the North Lake Tahoe area. I had watched a lot of skiing on TV, with Wide World of Sports and the Winter Olympics, and I was a three-sport athlete so I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn. Proverbs 16:18 (NLT) serves as a good description of my first day skiing: “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.” When you’re learning to ski, of course, I didn’t bother to take lessons, the two things you want to master are the “snowplow” and how to stop. The snowplow, for those who’ve never skied, is what it’s called when you form a “V” with your skis so the tips touch. By putting pressure on the inside edge of each ski you can turn right or left. If it sounds painful, it can be! I mastered the snowplow pretty quickly, while skiing down the bunny slope with all the five-year-olds zooming past me. Can you say, humbling? With growing confidence, I decided to start going faster and faster. I got going fast enough my snowplow technique wasn’t helping me to stop, then I remembered watching the pros stop on TV. To me it looked like they would put their skis side-by-side and then quickly turn them against the mountain. Remember, I’m an athlete so I attempted this move for the first time and while I did change direction, I didn’t stop or even slow down that much. Now I was headed directly for the trees next to the bunny slope and that’s where I finally stopped…in the trees. Nothing broken or bruised, but my ego.
Flash forward a nine years and I was now a legit intermediate skier. I was with a friend night skiing at Snoqualmie Pass. It was early in the season so not all the runs were open. Don and I decided to go down a run which was not open or well-lit but it looked fine to us. That was our first mistake, to ignore the warning signs. At the top of the run we agreed to go pretty much straight down the mountain to achieve as much speed as possible. Just as we reached our top speed I looked up and there was a creek, yes, a creek, flowing down the mountain directly in my path. Remember, I was going fast, so I launched into the air and cleared the creek. As I successfully landed, no so miracle in itself, I spotted a second creek which was just as wide as the first. I lifted over the creek and my speed carried me over the water, but the tail of my right ski caught the icy edge of the creek. The combination of speed and impact, literally threw me into a full-on flip and propelled me into air. In all my years of skiing, this was definitely my worst “yard sale.” I found my eyeglasses in the snow some 25-30 feet down the mountain, due to the force of my flip. Hat, goggles, skis, poles, all my gear was everywhere. Fortunately, I didn’t break any bones, but I was definitely bruised and bloodied, especially around my face, since that was what impacted the snow first after flipping through the air. Yes, it was the face-plant for all time.
From my observation and experience, there are increasing ways for people to “yard sale”, or train-wreck, their lives. We put ourselves in situations we think we can handle, or we ignore the warning signs (like my friend Don and I did), and we speed down the mountain of life. The problem is we don’t know how to stop. We don’t know how to get free of self-destructive, life-controlling habits. Proverbs 14:12 (NIV) reads, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” This proverb leads to a question: Is the way you’re going right now leading you to life or death?
I was very fortunate that night when I experienced my worst skiing accident ever. I could have been very seriously injured, all because Don and I ignored the signs and didn’t think through the possible consequences of our decision to ski on a closed run. I hope you’ll learn from my “yard sale” and make decisions today which will lead you towards the good life God has planned for you.
