CONQUERING FEAR

   Our Sunday School class went out to Grand Canyon one year.  I have no idea how old I was.  We were at least teenagers.  Before Grand, we stopped at a fire lookout tower.  We were messing around climbing up the tower to the locked gate nearly to the top.  When the caretaker came out with a key to begin her watch, she invited us to climb up, two or three at a time, through the trap door and into the little room where she stood watch. She let us look in her binoculars to see what she could see as she scanned the forest for fires during her shift.  Everyone had had a turn except me.  She thought we were through.  She opened the trap door just as I stepped from one side of the lookout to the other with the binoculars in front of my eyes.  I fell straight down to the first landing.  It was about six steps.  All the other steps are like stairs but these ladder-like steps were straight up.  Also, when you get higher, all the landings had protective wire around them but since this one was after the locked gate, it had no protection.  I remember, as I regained my senses after the total shock of the fall, my legs were dangling off the platform.  Can you imagine how much fun I had hiking the steep trails at Grand after that experience?  Just looking down made me dizzy.
    I've hated heights ever since that fateful day.

On our way home from Grand Canyon this summer,

we stopped at the Jacob Lake Lookout Tower.

 

"Let's climb up!" Amy presents.

"Go ahead.  I'll watch."

"Come on!

 

So we climb to the first landing.

"Go on ahead, Amy.  I'm tired."

"Come on."

Yes, we did!

We climbed clear to the trap door that was locked.

Amy went down first;

I only looked at her stripped shirt.

I did not look down.

After all these years,

at the exact spot,

I stared fear in the face.