SIGUCCS : Edmonton (Episode 2)

Every good conference starts with some sort of kickoff event. The organizers of SIGUCCS decided to use the facilities here at the West Edmonton Mall to set the tone for the conference by "Expanding Our Boundaries" with a beach party dead in the middle of winter!

The Mall boasts and amazing indoor waterpark that truly lives up to its hype. As you can see in the pictures, The waterpark includes an enormous wave pool, river raft rides, and a number of intertwined water slides. My cohort, Josh Ward, and I first made many vain attempts at bodysurfing the man-made waves. Unlike waves of the Pacific, these waves toss you around a little bit, but do not have the umph necessary to lift you up in the water and thrust you forward toward the shore. Therefore, no body surfing...boo-hiss. However, I managed to use the force that the waves possessed to move me progressively toward the shore in waves (with ALOT of swimming), so I approximated body surfing in waves.

Having conquered the seas, Josh and I set off for the water slides. We worked our way through the levels of difficulty: intermediate, difficult, and extreme. We started on the blue slide, an intermediate slide, which subjected us to twists and turns (some in the dark), but was not too bad. Then we tackled the tan slide, which was a difficult slide that started near the peak of the building and transported us through a number of very fast twists and turns before thrusting us into the water. Then, after two trips down a steep, two-story slide on some sort of waterboard, we attempted what they call "Nessie's Revenge" - a purple slide with three significant drops. The second plateau before the third drop shot us a good 6 inches off the slide before we landed in the pool. What a rush. Then, to top things off, I rode the monster of them all, the red slide that simply sends you straight down into a standard curve and into the water at VERY high speeds. I never saw nor tackled anything like this before, so it was a bit scary. But I simply trusted God through the physics of the slide and the tradition of those who went before me and had a crazy journey down the slide and into the waiting waters. Again, what a rush. So, needless to say, the opening reception was a blast - or a splash.

While riding water slides we met many wonderful people from other universities and discovered a bit about how other universities manage their IT resources. These instructive conversations set the stage for the next two days of fairly intense meetings, which should be helpful to my work at Baylor.

The water slide experience taught me an incredible lesson in trust tonight. The more I trusted, the more relaxed I became, and the more I enjoyed the slides. The more I feared, the more that fear realized itself and threatened to undo me on the slides. This trust manifested itself directly on the largest of the slides. As I prepared to slide myself off the edge, nearly straight down, I hesitated because I did not trust. So, I reset myself, allowed myself to relax and let myself begin the slide gently, took a deep breath for the bottom of the slide, laid back, and enjoyed the freefall. Resting in this trust allowed me to do all I needed to do to experience the exhilaration (not fear) of the slide. As I progressed from slide to slide from this moment, and affirmed my need to trust in each of these situations, my confidence grew and I became someone who enjoyed the ride for the ride itself, transitioning more easily from level to level. I see this as an instructive metaphor for life. Fear keeps me from many things, and some of that is healthy. However, there are many unhealthy fears in my life that I embrace to keep me within my comfort zones. These fears are designed, as much as I uphold them, to maintain the status quo and to protect me from perceived harm. As with the waterslides, I need to unmask these fears for the facades that they are and act in trust in areas where I often react in fear knowing that it is not my job to construct outcomes to situations, but to simply act faithfully within each situation I face. Faith is trust, and not a calculation. If I trust God carefully in each moment of life, and acknowledge my fear but do not let it own me, then I can rest in confidence and truly enjoy the ride of my life. All I must do is lay flat, let the waters drive me forward, and trust God in the life process. I don't think I have done a good job of this in the past, and plan to embrace this insight and its opportunity for personal transformation.