Montana January 2010 Part 1

Montana  Jan. 2010
Fear
In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence,
And His children will have a place of refuge.
 The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
To turn one away from the snares of death.
Proverbs 14: 26, 27

Saturday, January 2, 2010
As we flew into Missoula Montana, the weather beneath our plane was an adequate barometer of my mood. Normally I am upbeat and look forward to my trips to Montana with reckless, child-like abandonment. The swell of dark grey clouds that enveloped the earth and our plane as we descended highlighted my somber mood. I was afraid.

There were many reasons for this fear.
1. While I had made some half-hearted attempts at working out every day while I was home, I had not thrown myself into the exercise program Melanie (Doug’s wife) had outlined for me. She is a personal
trainer and a good one. She works out HARD everyday. I once told her I appreciated her knowledge and help. Her reply was that if I truly appreciated her, I would do what she told me. Now I would be seeing her without having done what she told me. I was afraid of her disapproval.

2. I would be driving a much bigger team when I got back than I had when I left. The repeated falls that had torn my right shoulder out of the socket and totally severed three of the four rotator cuff muscles had happened with a bigger team. The injury had occurred  January 3, 2009. I would be back on the sled for my first run of the new year on January 3, 2010. I was afraid of getting hurt again.

3. My biggest fear, however, was seeing Doug for the first time since I tore up his truck while he was in Arizona. The truck had been parked outside in the deep snow and required 4-wheel drive to be engaged until I got to the highway. I needed to disengage it before accelerating on the main road and I thought I had, when the shift lever shot forward into neutral as I accelerated to 35 mph. When I returned to the ranch I could not engage the 4-wheel drive again and kept getting stuck in the deep snow, but finally managed to get it back to the house. I later learned that I had destroyed the transfer case. Boy, that was going to cost me some money. But my bigger worry was the look on Doug’s face when I saw him again.

Fear is one of God’s gifts to us. It makes us stop and think before doing something stupid and it prepares our bodies for the consequences should something go wrong. Our blood vessels constrict, our pupils dilate, our heart pumps harder, our muscles tighten.