Fearful

"I am not going down by myself". I sternly told my brother. We had borrowed our mother's inflatable kayak which we had used for some fun river adventures while we were living in Jackson for the summer. We had run Lower Canyon a couple of times when the water level was high and the waves in California Curler were big enough to knock me back, but Daniel had always been the guide. I trusted his judgement on the river. But today he wanted to try kayaking which would mean I would be in my mom's duckie by myself, I would be the one guiding it. I had told him there was no way I would do it. Thoughts of the waves at Big Kahuna and Lunch Counter scared me. I didn't trust myself to maneuver safely over those rapids. Somehow my brother made me think that maybe he wouldn't kayak, that we would be in the duckie together, so I went along with him. But as we approached the Boys Camp, where his kayak was stored, I began to get really nervous. My brother, seemingly uninterested in my anxiety told me, "find someone here to go with you." As awkward as it was to ask guys who were more acquaintances than friends to go with me, I decided it was worth it. I wasn't skilled enough to guide myself down that river! I had no luck. Everyone already had plans. We left for the put-in, my brother with his kayak, and me empty-handed. My brother and I had a system going to get things ready for the river. I would pump up the duckie while he drove his truck to the take-out and hitched a ride back. While he was gone, some of his river guiding friends from the ward showed up with their kayaks. "Oh great!" I thought sarcastically. I had always thought these guys were the coolest and I really wanted to impress them since they were more my brother's friends than mine. "This is going to be embarrassing, now they'll really know how unskilled and unadventurous I am." I waited anxiously for my brother, hoping he would return quickly so we could start before this group. However, my brother was grateful to have more of his friends there, turns out he was a little nervous to be in his kayak and having more experts around meant more people to rescue him if the need arose. So all of us headed out together. What I had dreaded had come to be, I was on the duckie by myself. My thoughts were still on the bigger rapids that wouldn't come until almost the end. In a way it was a blessing to have a bigger group who knew the river. They were able to indicate where the dangerous spots were, but my thoughts were so focused on Big Kahuna and Lunch Counter and being in the duckie by myself that I wasn't really enjoying myself. I didn't take many risks, stayed to the side of rapids if I thought they looked too big. Rapids that I would have been fine with had my brother been in the boat with me. The closer I got to the dreaded rapids, the more nervous I got, and the less fun I was having. I was able to skirt the side of Big Kahuna and miss most of it, but I knew there would be no missing Lunch Counter, which was soon approaching; that rapid took up the whole river. I couldn't take it anymore, I couldn't do it, I had made my decision and right before the rapid, I brought my boat to the side and got out on dry land. I watched everyone else go by, relieved that I was out of the river. I then had to get to work, rolling the duckie up while I tried to clean off the dirt, haul it up the hill to the parking lot. As I did so I began thinking, "maybe I could have done it" My brother's truck drove into the lot and I got in with him and one of the boys who had done the trip with us. I was embarrassed because I had wimped out, but tried to make friendly conversation. After dropping the guy off, I called my dad, hoping for some reassurance, someone to tell me that it was good for me to drop out if I felt like it was too dangerous. Instead I got the response, "you could have done it." I'm sure it was well-intentioned, but it made me feel worse. Why had I been so scared?

Fear is a funny thing. There are times when it is good to have a sense of fear. It keeps people from getting too close to the edge of a cliff. But how many times do we worry too much about our fears, that we aren't able to enjoy the here and now? That kind of fear makes life unenjoyable. Sometimes we are capable of overcoming whatever it was that we feared so much, but because we focused so much on our fears and doubts, that we end up bailing or not trying our hardest.