A fear of heights.

Sometimes life throws you opportunities to stretch yourself. Sunday I found myself facing one of these opportunities. You see, I have a very real fear of heights. When I was little, I would go with my folks to visit a family friend who lived on the 33rd floor of a building. The corridors were far too narrow for my liking and I would panic if I got too close to the balcony. I mean it’s this bad folks…. my legs shake when I’m going up the stairs to slide down the Mammoth Falls at Wet and Wild, a local theme park so you can just imagine what was going through my mind while I was climbing up a ladder onto our roof. The fact was I really wanted to see some progress on the new boards that were going up on the façade of the roof. The renovations of our old farmhouse are going painfully slow and without my help to hold the boards in place there would be no progress. I climbed up slowly and steadily but stopped on the last rung of the ladder. My legs were frozen and I could not move. Johnny stood on the patio below laughing his head off at me. All the encouragement could not make me budge. I shouted down to him that he would have to get the fire brigade to take me down as I had no idea how I’d get down if getting up was this difficult. Finally I told myself, “Come on Tracy how difficult could this be?”. I stretched my left leg out around the ladder, leaned forward and took the step that put me on the rooftop. I had done it! I had conquered my fear of heights. Going back down wasn’t as bad as going up surprisingly and on the ground I stood back and smiled at the new boards we had put up. The light at the end of the tunnel was showing at last. A little more and we would finish the roof restoration.