It has taken me a whole year to get this story onto my blog, but here it is, exactly one year after this whole crazy thing happened:
If there is one thing you need to know about me at the beginning of this story, it’s this: I am no daredevil. I can be tempted into an adventure without much prodding, but not the reckless and irresponsible kind. I just like to have a good story to tell. When I first heard about The Crack*, I thought it would be just that: a fun story to remember my summer in Colorado. The Crack is natural obstacle course of sorts, a deep gash that split the side of a mountains leaving a short, navigable chain of caves. All summer, groups of people wiggle their way through, often at night to add an air of mystery to the whole thing. For most climbers, the whole thing takes half an hour maximum. How hard could it be, we thought. Sounded like fun. And so we went. We began our climb a little before midnight on a warm July Saturday and made it two thirds of the way through with relatively little trouble. There were some spots to squeeze through that were a bit tighter than I had expected, some slopes to climb up that were a little steeper or a little more slippery than I had imagined. But on the whole, it was not bad at all. As with most accidents, everything was just fine until suddenly it wasn’t. In one trickier part of the cave, I was supposed to scoot a few feet across a narrow crack until the walls of the cave opened up and I could slide down the wall to the next opening. I watched as each of my friends did it one by one. When it was my turn, I scooted into the opening, began to inch my way across, and suddenly felt my foot slip. With nothing to grab onto to stop myself, I slid down into the crack until I was wedged in front and back by smooth rock, pinched by the walls of the cave from my knees to my ribcage. I tried to pull myself back up to start over again, but there was nothing to hold onto. I tried to squirm my way to the side to make it into the wider opening, but I just wriggled myself deeper into the crack. From below me, Matt called out encouragement and tried to help. A soon-to-be new friend, Rob, who had been behind me in the cave tried to pull me out from above. Nothing worked. The longer we struggled, the worse it got. I was hanging by my ribcage pinched tightly by the mountain. A chunk of rock was stabbing me in the right side of my ribs and another in my back. I was exhausting myself trying to wiggle out, had badly bruised my legs banging them on the walls of the cave and it was getting harder and harder to breathe with my ribcage unable to expand and contract. After a while, Rob had to hold up my head to keep it from lolling painfully backwards. I started to panic. I struggled to control my shallow breaths so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. How had I gotten myself into this? I knew it was my own fault. I had chosen to come here, and now I was trapped. I felt like I was going to pass out. Without the relentless optimism and gentle coaching of the people around me, I surely would have. Someone finally called 9-1-1. They would come as soon as they could, they said, but it might take up to two hours for them to arrive from all around the county. I have never felt so helpless in all my life. My arms were free, so I pressed my palms to the cold rock wall that was trapping me and prayed aloud for Jesus to save me from this mess I’d gotten myself into. I think I had enough humor left in me to make a joke about faith that moves mountains, but I was seriously terrified. Even when the Search and Rescue came, I thought, they might break my spine trying to extract me from here leaving me paralyzed or worse. Well, for all our praying, the walls of the mountain did not move. Something did slowly shift in me, though, and I calmed down enough to get a grip on my breathing. I didn’t know if I was going to come out of that cave in one piece, but I knew deeper than words can say it that Jesus was there with me. No matter what the outcome of this particular chain of my bad choices, I knew I was safe with Him. When the rescue workers finally came—all 20 of them with their climbing gear and floodlights and fire truck and ambulance—they found me calmer than I ever could have been on my own and smiling at my friends’ crazy jokes and stories. It took them another two hours for them to painfully haul me up out of the crack millimeter by millimeter. Over and over, they kept asking how I could possibly be so calm? How could I be handling this so well? So I gave them the only answer I had: Jesus. Jesus was protecting me. He allowed Himself to be torn on the cross so that nothing would ever be able to tear me away from Him. Not the depths of a mountain cave, not the depths of my sin and brokenness, not anything. After five hours of being stuck, I miraculously walked out of that cave with nothing worse than scrapes and bruises and a healthy fear of tight spaces. Every day of my life, I praise the God who was there with me. I couldn’t agree more with the Psalmist who said, "Let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation...in his hands are the depths of the earth." [Psalm 95:1,4] *Note: Once I was safe and sound, my valiant team of rescuers informed me that this climb requires a permit that we didn’t have and that it falls on what might be private property, which means we never should have been up there in the first place. So if any part of you is thinking maybe you should try hiking the Crack yourself, don’t. It’s so not worth it. |