Don’t Let Fear Shut You Down
“Todd, I can’t feel anything below my neck. I can’t move my arms or feel my legs…”
My wife, Julie, was barely conscious as she lay fighting for her life on the side of a mountain. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911 as I felt fear surging through my body. Would this be the last time I would see my wife alive? This trip was supposed to be an adventure, but it turned out to be a nightmare.
It had all started a few days earlier when Julie and I traveled to go hiking together in the mountains of Colorado. It was one of our favorite places to go skiing in the winter, but we had never been there in summer, and we quickly fell in love with the place all over again. Every day as we were hiking the trails of the resort, we saw people loading bikes onto chairlifts and riding them down the mountain. It looked awesome! My appetite for adventure worked overtime to convince Julie we ought to try it. I finally wore her down, and on our very last day of the trip she agreed to give it a go.
We rented the bikes and loaded them on the chairlift and made our way to the top. We rarely rode bikes at home in the flatlands of Florida, let alone went mountain biking, but we reasoned, when in Rome… We arrived at the top and found the path marked “Easiest Way Down”—just a gravel service road from the top of the mountain to the base. It was a little challenging, but we made it to the bottom in about twenty minutes. Julie thought we were finished. We accomplished what we set out to do, but since I had rented the bikes for two hours, I wanted to get my money’s worth, so back up the chairlift we went.
The guy at the top pointed us in a direction that would be “slightly more challenging,” but we soon found ourselves in the middle of hairpin turns through trees. It was crazy. And dangerous. So, we pulled out of the trees, saw the service road we had just come down about fifty yards away and headed in that direction. What we didn’t realize was that the only way to get to the service road was across a ski run. As Julie made her way across, her bike got pointed downhill and she quickly picked up speed. I remember watching as she went racing down the hill out of control. The bike hit a rock, and she was thrown through the air and landed on her back. Still to this day, I can recall the fear that swept through my body as I replay the scene in my mind.
I jumped off my bike and ran to where she had landed. She was barely conscious. She told me she couldn’t feel anything from her neck down. She couldn’t move her arms or feel her legs. At that moment, I thought our lives had changed forever. Would Julie make it off the mountain alive that day, or would our adventure end right there? But within the next few moments, all the feelings came back, and she felt everything. Every part of her body was in excruciating pain. I found my phone and dialed 911.
They dispatched the mountain patrol, but they couldn’t locate us. During the summer months, the vegetation and shrubs grew thick on the mountain, and we were hidden by rocks and overgrown bushes. After two hours of being stranded on the side of a mountain, they found us, put Julie on a board, placed that board on a wheelbarrow, and wheeled her to the service road, where a pickup truck was waiting. After a bumpy trip down the mountain, Julie was placed in an ambulance and rushed to Vail Hospital, where they determined she had fractured her back, broken her shoulder, collapsed a lung, and shattered five ribs.
By the time we arrived at the hospital, Julie was fighting for her life. For days, the doctors worked to make sure her vital organs were functioning properly. It was a long recovery, but miraculously Julie built back her strength. Her body began to heal, and we returned home with a renewed sense of gratitude for life. Julie would tell you the only permanent loss she suffered was her sense of adventure.
You might hear that story and ask, “What were you thinking? You guys had never ridden mountain bikes before, so what made you think you could ride them down a ski mountain in Colorado?” The truth is we didn’t understand the risk involved. We were unaware of how dangerous mountain biking can be. Since the accident, I have read about people who have been permanently disabled and some who even died on that same mountain in Colorado. But that day, we were unaware of the dangers.
My once sky-high adventurous spirit deflated into a deep sense of hesitation and doubt. After that moment on the mountain, I began to doubt my ability to make decisions and protect my wife. I questioned my confidence in God’s promises for our future together. All it took was one jarring moment on the mountain for me to be in the grip of doubt.
While doubt doesn’t have the power to cause bodily injury or death, it does have the power to crush your spirit. Destroy your dreams. Limit your life. Doubt is more dangerous than most people realize. Don’t get me wrong, accidents, heartbreaks, and even the mistakes we make can teach us valuable lessons about life. They can create a healthy caution that informs our future decisions, but when our doubts and fears take over, they can cripple our spirit and keep us from living the life God intended for us to live.
To learn more about Todd Mullins’s latest book, Don’t Let Doubt Take You Out, visit MyCharismaShop.com