The power of words

I told y’all I was gonna do more blogs that were sharing what I’m learning throughout this year. As I was going back through photos I was reminded about something that happened in South Africa. 

Our time in Jeffrey’s bay was busy and also not at the same time. It was very confusing, we were figuring out new roles, new teams, our squad leaders left (I was big emo about that), and everything felt a little chaotic. We had mini debrief at the end of the month where our raised up squad leaders could take a few days and decide what the squad needed and pour into us. 

It was decided that part of what was needed was fun, so we set out for an all squad adventure day to the local watering hole. Didn’t know what to expect when we heard the phrase “watering hole” but we grabbed our bucket hats and piled into our vans. 

We got there to see it was in fact a watering hole, as in a little lake with some cliffs around it and a zipline into the water. We settled in and were enjoying watching the people zipline or jump into the water. We saw these two seemingly crazy guys jump off of a very high cliff into the water and two of my squad mates decided they were going to do it too. They got up there and jumped from a cliff that was about 30 ft, we thought they were a little crazy but they had fun with it. 

A little while went by, we were sitting there chatting, about to start thinking about wrapping up the adventure, and I got the urge

to jump off the cliff. Not in a dramatic way, I just was thinking about how fun it’d be to say I went cliff jumping in South Africa. 

I got a pit in my stomach and that was when I knew I had to follow through. I can’t remember if I wrote a blog about it, but when we were in Costa Rica we went to a waterfall and there was a rope swing that you could swing and jump off of. It was like maybe 25 ft, felt nerve wracking. I made myself swing off it, cause I got a pit in my stomach and was a little scared by it. Anytime I feel that pit physically, I make myself push through and do the thing that’s scaring me, cause I want to practice for when things happen spiritually. Praying over strangers? Yeah that can be scary and I’ll get nervous and get a pit in my stomach. Praying for someone’s healing? Sometimes same thing. But I’ve pushed through that feeling cause obedience is more important. 

So anyways, whenever an opportunity arises to practice getting over that feeling by doing something that is physically nerve wracking, I take it cause I want to be used to doing that when the spiritual nerve wracking opportunity presents itself. 

I told my friend Claudia I was gonna go jump off the higher cliff and she said she’d come do it too. Once I got up there and looked over the edge I was instantly feeling the fear and the pit in my stomach. I knew I was gonna do it cause I couldn’t back out when I was so close. It took me a solid 15 minutes to figure out how I was gonna jump without hitting the rocks. 

As I waited, the fear grew, I knew I had to just go without thinking so I jumped, and fell, and fell, and had the thought of “how am I still falling?” And then smacked the water. 

Had every intention of having perfect form, but when I touched the water something in me just wanted to banana. Genuinely I thought I’d broken my tailbone, but I was mostly fine.

All that day, and the next my body hurt and I could tell my tailbone was bruised. The skin on my backside looked like I got in a car wreck and I found myself telling everyone of how I’d made a terrible mistake and a reallllllllyyyy stupid decision. 

One of my friends corrected me without even knowing it cause he was talking about how he really wants to be careful with his words and what he speaks over people. And I realized I had slipped really easily into using language that was derogatory on myself for several months now. 

It was a weird revelation cause normally I’m the first person to stop other people from self derogatory comments and make them compliment themselves, but when it came to my own self I had easily fallen into the cycle of just tearing myself down for decisions I could’ve decided not to make. I realized I had done it often as of late and it had to stop. Either I was gonna own up to the actions and decisions I make, or I needed to make better decisions. There’s no time in life to spend wasting tearing your own self down. 

We got up the next day and did worship on the beach and then they told me I had Covid and I quarantined for a single day (see my other blog about that) and then we tested negative, packed up, got into a combi with a broken seat for 15 bumpy hrs, and arrived in Lesotho. 

So this is just a reminder to watch the words you say over yourself and watch your form if you ever cliff jump!