Learn to embrace the challenges of life the way a downhill skeleton racer hits a wall when out of control, says Courtney. Relax, embrace the hit. Don’t steer away from the pain. Listen to the Lord.
While training to compete in the Olympics as a skeleton racer, Courtney learned there is nothing to protect the racer from the hard ice when careening out of control. “You hit an ice wall that feels like cement,” she said.
At those moments, a trainer taught her, when heading out of control into a curve, instead of steering away or flinching for the impact, learn to relax, sink into the curve, embrace the hit. As a result, he said, you set yourself up for a smoother impact and a better result coming out of the curve.
Embracing the hit has application in life, Courtney says. She shares several experiences in her life when she was broadsided with calamities she never saw coming and how learning to embrace those situations aided her in discovering the Lord’s hand in her life.
She said she found herself on her knees praying to Heavenly Father-wrestling for relief from the pain and hurt. “I felt like I was paddling in the deepest ocean and slowly drowning,” she said.
In response and over time, she learned to listen to the Lord. He showed her how to give her burden to Him and how to love others, even strangers. “All these things shall give thee experience,” she kept hearing in her soul.
“As I learned to embrace the hit, I learned that the greater the challenge, the greater the capacity for joy,” she says. “Trials are essential in order to experience the brightness of joy.”
While we may not know what Heaven is doing, she says, “He is precisely aware.”
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