When Life Throws You For A Loop

My daughters and I love tubing. Not snow tubing but the tubing we do on Lake Winnipesaukee.

For years, my wife’s uncle has taken us out on the Lake to enjoy the beauty that is Lake Winnipesaukee.

The scenery is unmatched. We love to vacation there.

But what most of us talk about when we are not up there is how her uncle loves to get someone out on the tube and whip them around. The smile on his face as the person gets out from the boat’s wake and then is whipped from one side to the other is priceless.

The only time you’ll see him smile more is when he is able to flip somebody out of the tube. Once he has tossed you out of the tube and people in the boat let him know, his icon reply to the wipeout is “Oh, that’s beautiful.”

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T. S. Eliot

Why Are Wrecks Beautiful?

My wife’s uncle is not evil. He just loves pushing himself and others to see what they can do. To see how far they can go.

In some sense, I see him metaphorically as Life. Life sometimes throws us for a loop.

Wrecks, failures, and wipeouts are not beautiful in and of themselves.

They do provide a gauge as to where we are.

If a pole vaulter never knocks the bar off the standards, they will never know how high they can go.
I find it interest that the standards are defined as the equipment that holds the bar at a particular height above the ground.

The standards are there to let us know how the attempt was. If you could easily clear 10 feet and never knocked the bar off, how hard would you try to beat that achievement? How do you know you are at your best?

At a height of 6.18 m, or 20 ft 3+1⁄4 in, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis holds the pole vault world record.

I guarantee that he has knocked the bar off more times than not.

In knocking off the bar, his wipeout was beautiful. He could gauge his progress.

Wrecks, Failures, and Wipeouts In Life

It’s the rough times in life that we remember and can learn a lot from.

If life was easy all the time, how much would we really grow?

When we are going through hard times, remember the old saying that goes “you’ll laugh about it someday, might as well laugh about it today.”

We need to take things seriously but we also need to have perspective on things as well.

What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.

My daughters are getting better each and every time they go out tubing. Why? Because each and every time they are being pushed a little bit more by my wife’s uncle.

Redeeming Wrecks, Failures, and Wipeouts

When your wreck, “failure”, or wipeout is about pushing through a limit, be that in regards to strength (my daughters holding on to the tube), or coordination (Armand Duplantis and pole vaulting), or mindset, you can redeem it.

Some time ago, my mother-in-law had severe pain in her knee. She almost canceled her vacation up at the Lake because of it, but she didn’t. She did talk with her doctor and grudgingly agreed to have a knee replacement operation.

As expected, she was somewhat apprehensive about the operation and recovery at first. As she started doing physical therapy at the office (instead of in-home PT), she saw where somebody 2 weeks/months ahead of her was. As she should continue to progress through her rehab, she was able to look at other people that were coming in and say “Oh wow! I have made progress. I used to be back there.”

By the time she finished PT on her knee, she went to her doctor and wanted to have the other knee replaced.

She had broken through the mindset and physical pain to redeem her experience. Now she is pain-free, able to play with her 8 grandkids.

Helping Others

When going through a wreck, “failure”, or wipeout, it is difficult to look beyond the present pain and hurt.

When we are able to look at things that we went through and see how they are being used or could be used if we let them, we can allow them to develop our character, allow us to share our experience of making it through something that then God can use to help us walk alongside somebody who’s going through it.

The fact that we made it through can be an encouragement to those that are going through it now or to those that went through it but did not come out of it as unscathed as you did.

It is often through our adversity that we, as humans, typically learn the most valuable of lessons and are able to help others.