Snowboarding: Slopes, Spills, and Sitting Ducks

Leading up to my first snowboarding experience, people kept telling me how hard it was. “Try skiing,” they suggested. “It’s easier.” 

Not one person told me I could do it. 

So I set out to prove to myself that my attraction to the sport in general (or was it Shaun White?) might merit some natural skill. I’m standing at the bottom of Wild Mountain slopes, looking like an Oompa Loompa in my oversized snow pants, trying to strap the board on when Han says, “Grace, you’re putting the board on backwards.” It was the perfect start to a day of mishaps.

Eventually I got in forwards, but led with my right foot (goofy style) as I was copying Elijah and Andrew. Because I first led with my right foot, I found I couldn’t switch to my left, so spent the day taking the lifts with goofy footing and riding the slopes with regular. Honestly, the freakiest part of snowboarding is the lifts. One of the five guys in the group started a running joke that every time the ski lift stopped, I must have fallen getting off. “Grace is holding up the line again!” (As it happened, I never caused the ski lift to stop, even though I botched nearly every dismount.)  

If there’s one word to describe my snowboarding experience, it would be vulnerable. 

I was expecting it to be hard, I was expecting to succeed, and I was expecting to have fun—all three of which happened. What I was not anticipating was for my being (heart? pride?) to feel as shredded as my body by five o’clock.

Makes sense upon reflection. I’ve never met a person who jumps at opportunities to feel stupid, inadequate, and needy. I’ve met many people who avoid trying new things for that very reason. I hadn’t passed the initial strapping of the board when I realized I had to dispose of my pride. While I’m not afraid to ask for help, I prefer to do things independently. I relish a challenge, especially when someone thinks I should take the easy road. 

I also have a heart-idol—one that must be smashed every day if not every hour—of people’s approval. Without my desire to gain people’s approval, there would be no desire to overcome a challenge, prove everyone wrong. Neither could I walk away without proving to myself that I could do it. How those desires battled on the slopes! 

Every time I went down, my heart reminded me look how incapable you are. 

I was afraid to try anything bigger or harder than the kiddy slopes because I could barely control my board. I hated being out of control. I was not afraid of the slick ice or the risk or the jumps, but of the fact that I was inadequate to conquer them. I was afraid to let people see me fail. The warring desires and fears threatened to ruin my day.

I prayed, asking God to take the feelings away. He didn't. Instead He showed me how I live under them every day. Trying something new and difficult forced those feelings to the forefront of my awareness, but I was ruled by pride and approval as a lifestyle. My heart gave way like water breaching a dam. I surrendered the feelings to God and embraced the painful transparency of their absence.

Letting go of feeling like an inconvenience allowed me to let Andrew teach me how to stop, turn, and cut. He was patient, encouraging, helpful. Letting go of fearing failure allowed me to let Elijah take me on the terrain park and Double Black Diamond jumps. (I’m still trying to decide if I was giving into peer pressure, stupidity, or my desire to prove that I could do it. I couldn’t do the Diamond jumps, but as he said, once I tried the hard runs, the other hills would seem tame. He was right—I was freed from any fearful reserve.) 

Elijah knew all the right things to say. When I wiped out painfully on the terrain hill, frustrated to the point of tears, he didn’t pamper, or discourage, or even encourage—just cracked a joke. It reminded me that every snowboarder had once been where I was. Wiping out to the point of tears. Falling is the biggest part of learning the sport. A lesson in humility.

I dried my eyes, got on the board, and went down again. 

By the end, I had succeeded a few times in hitting all three jumps, and even the sloped wall at the bottom. Other boys aided me with the tow rope and gave me pointers. They didn’t act superior or scornful toward the nooby girl in the oversized snow pants. I bet they were all remembering what if felt like to have their pride scraped away by the ice.

By five, my body was so fatigued I could not go ten feet without spilling. But I was satisfied: I had succeeded in snowboarding, at least for a first-timer. However, it wasn’t the feeling of proving myself that I latched onto. Rather, it was the conquering of fear, learning perseverance, and surprisingly, that transparency which is more bruising than the ice and more freeing than the perfect run.

That afternoon caught me like an unexpected right hook to the jaw. In the shriveling fear of failure and ridicule, all I could do was depend on God. The act of snowboarding was really an act of smashing my idols. There was nothing I could do to remedy my inadequacy and neediness. I had to trust that God would protect me in my state of vulnerability. He proved Himself faithful. A peace blanketed my chaotic heart, a freedom to embrace the exposure and enjoy the ride.  

Isn’t that what He always intended? For His children to rest in His sufficiency? Didn’t Jesus come for my neediness? If I could feel such closeness with Him during an afternoon of snowboarding, I wonder what my life would look like if I lived every day in the grace of that vulnerability. I want to get to a place where I'm a sitting duck and anyone can take a potshot at me, and any wounds will simply remind me that I am not my own sufficiency. 

I have a feeling—just like the feeling of knowing I could snowboard—that if I did, God would take me on the ride of my life.