Skiing and doodling are two new things I’m applying myself to in this season of my life, just because they are at hand and I have the time. And because I need to overcome the associated fears. Of falling. Of breaking. Of embarrassing myself. Of failing…
At face value they may not look like much. And if you’ve been looking at pictures here this winter you’ve already seen enough snow!
But in the practicing there have been lessons. Valuable ones, that go beyond the actual skill that grows with each effort.
How to fall. How to get up. How to bid shaking knees be strong and stride on…
I’ve learned that a drawing starts with one tentative line. Mistakes can be redeemed, lines re-routed, or bad starts entirely scrapped with no earth-shattering consequence.
Ability is relative. Doubting whether I can succeed is no reason not to try.
Committing to try, today, and tomorrow and the next day… is the first step to succeeding, or failing. Which will it be? Who’s to say? At least I can show up and see what happens. There will be surprises either way!
I have learned I can laugh at myself. I can go “poof” into a snow drift at a sharp curve in a slick downhill trail and roll over and get up and try it again. You will never see those pictures. I need not keep a record of the times I fail…
I can tackle a drawing that looks so beyond me I wonder why I’m trying, and well, it may be, the first time. But there’s a glimmer of something good and practice may yet render a pleasing effect. I’ll never know if I don’t try.
Fear dies hard. Balance takes time to achieve. Training muscles and fingers and reflexes and undoing lifelong thought patterns takes time… and continuance…
These things I’m learning as I show up at the snowy trail and the snow-white page
and commence to leave tracks.
–LS
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them…” Eph.2:10
So proud of this young lady…