Stepping out on a ledge necessary in life

I sat on the couch between my two roommates, our eyes fixated on the screen. Every five seconds or so, we took turns uttering the phrases “I can’t watch this,” “This is nuts!” and “Oh my God.”
No, we weren’t watching some weird soap opera or reality TV show. We were watching a man walk through the sky.
On Nov. 2, the Discovery Channel aired “Skyscraper Live.” The title says it all: on a live broadcast, 35-year-old Nik Wallenda walked across a suspended cable that linked the top of Chicago’s 588-foot Marina Tower West to the top of the 671-foot Leo Burnett building just across the Chicago River.
There was no safety net in place. If he fell, he would drop over 600 feet to his death.
As if that wasn’t intense enough, Wallenda walked uphill on the wire, which was suspended at a record-breaking 19 degree incline, according to ABC News. It took him just over six minutes to make the 454-foot walk with only a pole for balance.
Still not impressed? After completing the initial task, he made an additional 94-foot walk between two different towers, 543 feet from the ground. Again, there was no net beneath him. Oh, and he did this one blindfolded.
Wallenda comes from an entire family of circus performers, and has been performing such stunts his entire life. In 2012, he made a record-breaking walk over Niagara Falls from the U.S. into Canada. In 2013, he made a quarter-mile journey on a wire suspended over the Little Colorado River Gorge, spending over two hours over the canyon on a shaking cable less than an inch wide.
Both of these ventures were done without safety nets.
I watched both of those stunts as well; but it was here, as I watched Wallenda walk across a five-eighths-of-an-inch wide wire high above the Windy City, that I was struck with a sudden thought: Why have I never seen this as a life metaphor before?
Here’s the thing. I love metaphors. I love taking an idea from a movie, novel or story and making it relevant to my life. What Wallenda does in his stunts is perhaps one of the most intense metaphors I’ve ever connected with.
In life, sometimes we will find ourselves in a really hard place. It’s like standing at the top of a tower, or a mountain or something else so big that we can’t get it down. The only way to move – to move on from that hard place – is standing out on the edge, knowing there isn’t a safety net underneath you, and taking that first step out anyway.
It’s hard and it’s scary, and you might not know if you’ll even make it past one step; but you do it anyway, because you have plans.
You have dreams that don’t include staying stuck on top of that tower of hardship. And the best part is, unlike Wallenda, we do have a safety net in the real world. It’s called faith.
Throughout both of his walks, Wallenda was constantly praying and thanking God for bringing him just that one step further.
While he didn’t have a physical net underneath him, he did have a Protector walking with him every step of the way.
We have that same protection. If we screw up and make a wrong step, we won’t fall. We may lose our footing, but we’ll never fall.
We can choose to not move; just stay trapped on our tower of hardship forever. But nothing will give you a greater peace and faith than closing your eyes – saying a quick “Jesus, take the wheel” – and taking that first step to where you want to be.
I’d be lying if I said it was a fun feeling.
I’m standing on the ledge of my own tower right now, and the last thing I want to do is step onto a wire above a gaping hole of uncertainties.
But the longer I stay on that ledge, the more fear and doubt is going to start eating away at me; start telling me “you can’t,” “you’ll fail,” “it’s stupid to even try.”
Some people call what Wallenda does “stupid,” because even with years of training, all it would take to end his life is one misstep. I disagree; what he does is courage at its finest. Because what is courage?
I would define it as finding that one thing that scares you out of your mind… and then doing it anyway. I’m getting off the ledge and onto the wire – maybe while “Defying Gravity” plays as a background track. Who’s with me?