Being petrified is often the key to feeling alive

​The picture below popped up in my memories yesterday. It's a picture of my boys and their cousin riding a tube on Seely Lake in Montana. I actually captured a series of this tube ride. In the series, you can see the boys' faces go from scared to death to full of smiles.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. She was about to begin a four day, 100 mile run through Yosemite. She said, "I'm petrified, but feeling alive."

I met this friend when I went to Honduras a few years ago. As we were talking about Honduras, I told her, it was in Honduras that I felt as alive as I can ever remember feeling.

The thing is, before I went to Honduras, I remember being as petrified as I've ever been about anything. Honduras was as foreign an activity - in every way - that I'd ever taken on.

My friend got me thinking about this connnection yesterday, the connection between petrified and alive. They are sort of opposites, aren't they - this idea of being paralyzed with fear and being fully alive?

In one way, being petrified is a natural biological response. It's the body's way of stopping us in the midst of danger and forcing us to assess: do I run or hide or fight?

But in another way, it's a completely planned response that forces us to ask the same question: do I run or hide or fight? I found myself wondering yesterday, somewhere deep in our human nature are we constantly being called to that question? I found myself wondering, is there a connection between being petrified and feeling alive?

I saw it on my 14 year old's face last week when he couldn't run from the call of being scared to death by the giant roller coaster. And I'll never forget the 'I feel alive' look on his face after he answered that call.

Kids seem to know this, don't they? They know feeling alive is always just this side of being paralyzed by fear. It's like magnets suck them to the edge of it.

As a parent, we spend so much of those early years of their lives trying to talk them away from - even PULL them away from - that edge. Be careful. Slow down. Don't get too close. Don't touch that. We are in a constant battle with that magnet sucking them to the edge.

What happens, then, as adults, that makes us petrified to go anywhere near petrified? What happens that makes us start believing feeling alive is found in stillness and safety, and not in tackling 100 miles of the Yosemite? What happens that makes us believe our lives are lived best with quiet hearts, and not hearts pounding against our chest - begging to explore life?

In some ways, I think this natural response of our bodies that steers us clear of being petrified has somehow convinced us that being petrified is always bad.

But after reminiscing at the pictures of my boys on that tube, after feeling the petrified in my friend ready to tackle the Yosemite, after feeling again the overwhelming love for life and people I had in those tiny villages of Honduras - I find myself believing petrified is something to run to, not from.

Petrified may not be the key to life, but it's a GIANT clue. It may not be a place to relocate to, but it is certainly an invitation we need to accept more often than we do.

Because often, it's in petrified when we can say with more enthusiasm than ever - "I'm feeling alive."