I had a different topic in mind for this post, but that one will have to wait. Right now, I’ve got skiing on my mind. I have some friends who are currently on Spring Break, and posting status updates on Facebook about their fun on the slopes. I am enjoying the snowy weather vicariously through them. I had another friend send an e-mail to let me know that he has begun to plan a ski trip to Utah next February, in hopes that we will join them.

I took my two young boys skiing for the first time last month and I had visions of the years to come: spending time as a family enjoying the snow. Perhaps it is because the sport is similar to swimming. Snow is frozen water (I know that’s a stretch); but more so because, as with swimming, when you ski you are alone in your own mind. Going down a run, it’s just you, your skis and the snow. But yet, the companionship of skiing – as with swimming – is what makes the sport so enjoyable.

Two days ago I received an e-mail from a woman who was at one of my book talks a few weeks ago. She had just read What Though the Odds, and was writing because a close friend of her husband’s was in a skiing accident over the weekend. He broke his back (same level as mine). He was in surgery. He was paralyzed, yet had reported some feeling. The similarities are numerous - and hopeful. But yet my heart aches for this family – and for the family of Natasha Richardson, whose death from a skiing injury I just learned about on CNN.  

A tragedy is something that changes your life forever. It is more than a newscast. It is more than a sad e-mail about an accident. It alters your life, and you can never go back. It changes you. It changed me. Yet, I am happy with the changes. In the midst of your tragedy it is hard to see the goodness – but it is there. It is hard to count your blessings, but they are there as well. It is easy to look for blame; it is easy to lay blame. But that will only prevent you from seeing the goodness. Will the tragedy change you and make you a more fearful person? Or will you let the goodness change you.

I like to think I chose the latter. I can’t be fearful; I love to ski.