Life Lessons from the Ski Slope

It’s been one week since my skiing accident.  My daughter and I happened to go down the wrong hill and I got going too fast, was too inexperienced to know what to do and I crashed.  Boy did I crash.  I felt a pop in my knew and spent 5 minutes lying in the snow, skis still on, leg twisted back trying to figure out how to get my ski off so my leg could be bent back to the right position.  Thankfully I didn’t break anything, but I did get hurt and have been in a knee immobilizer since.  I won’t lie, I hurt something else as well-- my pride. Of course this after making jokes before going about not skiing in a long time and what people should do if I ended up in the hospital.  I didn’t thing I would really get hurt. I’ve learned a few things about skiing and it applies to our Christian walk as well.  But of course it would, I have to parallel it to that.  Would you expect anything different?  Here’s what I learned.

1.      Start with the bunny hill and don’t go to another hill until you have mastered the basics.  Even though I accidently got on the wrong hill I was going so fast that I didn’t have the knowledge of how to stop.  I was headed for the trees, gaining speed by the second and the snow plow used for the bunny hill wasn’t working.  I thought I had the tools, but I was wrong.   Here’s a scripture that could go well with this.  1 Corinthians 3:2 says, I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.   This talks about new Christians who should be working on their relationship basics with Jesus but not jumping too quickly into areas of maturity that they are not ready for.  If you have just become a Christian why would you start teaching a Sunday School class when you are still learning what being a Christian is?  So it was with me going down a hill I had no business going down.  I wasn’t mature enough, didn’t have the knowledge and skill enough for it and I crashed, hurt myself and am not too excited about getting back to skiing anytime soon.  We don’t want to see new Christians eating “solid food” too quickly as too discourage them when they fail never wanting to continue their pursuit of Jesus again.

2.      Wear a helmet.   Recently we bought our daughter a helmet for her new skiing adventures but because I wasn’t going to go very often I wasn’t going to “waste” the money on one for me.  Fortunetly, the Lord saved me from hitting the trees that I was so quickly headed towards during my ski incident.  Others haven’t been so lucky.  Have you read the newspapers about all of the people that die skiing without that helmet of protection?  Why would I think I would be exempt from that?  I mean especially with the book that I just wrote called Stumbling Along?  That should have been my first sign.   Here’s what the Bible says in Ephesians 6 about protection. Verse 13 says, Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. If we only put on part of our gear and not all, we are going to be tripped up Because we’ve been talking about the importance of a helmet, let me just mention what verse 17 says, Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.   Do you think a helmet is important?  Not only in skiing is it important, but as a Christian, it’s our lifeline to God!

3.      Make sure you are skiing with someone.  I was very thankful that I wasn’t alone.  My daughter and I both went down the wrong hill together.  She crashed before me about 20-30 yards down the hill and thankfully didn’t hurt herself as badly.  But we were together.  I could yell down from my awkward crash position and know if she was alright.  She was able to take her skiis off and walk up hill to sit with me until the medics arrived.  There we sat in the cold snow talking about our mishaps, wondering how long it would take for the medic snowmobile to arrive, the embarrassement of crashing all the while she encouraged me with kind words and actions.  The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.  Did you catch that?  If one falls down (Laurie while skiing) there is one (Laurie’s daughter) there to pick her up.  Though my daughter couldn’t physically pick me up, she picked me up just by being at my side and encouraging me.  As a Christian we fall or struggle with things, there is an amazing difference when we have a friend praying for us and picking us up in our walk with Jesus.

4.      When you fail or fall make sure you tell someone and don’t try to let it heal on it’s own.  I made the assumption that I could go to bed the night after my accident and wake up, maybe a little sore, but that I would be fine.  I didn’t go get it checked out or run and tell a doctor because I thought I could take care of it on my own.  I had quite the surprise the next morning when I awoke and saw the size of my knee not being able to bend it. I knew something was really wrong and I knew that I had to go tell someone—the doctor.  At that point she was the one that was going to get me on the right track from whatever was wrong.  Why are we so deficient in telling people when we have failed or are hurting?  We have this thing inside of us that we can take care of it on our own and that’s when it gets worse. (This spoken from true experience in both my ski life and my Christian life.)   James 5:16 says, Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.  As a Christian it may be very humbling to tell someone that you’ve failed or fallen in some area.  How wonderful it can be to have someone that will pray for you and point you in the right direction.  Maybe that direction from a friend will be suggesting prayer, a Bible study, speaking to a pastor or counselor or maybe it will just be them checking up on you.  The main thing is that you go to where you can be healed and oftentimes God will bring a person into our lives to point us to him. 

Thankfully I’m healing in my physical body from my accident.  If only I had taken to heart the steps above before I went skiing.  But, it’s how we learn to do things differently.  This was also a way for me to step back and look at my Christian life and be aware of how not to crash and burn.  I want to be at the top of my game in my walk with Jesus.  Without safeguards in place ahead of time I will crash.  I don’t want to look back later and say, “If only I had have……”