THE ROAD TO OVERCOMING FEAR ISN’T A STRAIGHT line. When I started writing this chapter, I thought I knew where it was going to go. But then I was sitting in church listening to and singing the song “Stand in Your Love,” by Josh Baldwin, which reminded me that when I’m standing in God’s love, “my fear doesn’t stand a chance.”1 I was overwhelmed with emotion. I broke into tears as this powerful thought came to mind: The songs you sing have been prayers spoken over your entire life.
It was an arresting moment, not only because I’m prone to emotional displays in church at least twice a month by the power of what is happening in a church service, but because this was such a powerful statement. So many people aren’t prepared for the aftermath of their personal trauma or tragedy. The moment something unexpected or unfortunate happens in their lives, they are immediately adrift. That’s how I felt after the accident—the world was still rolling on around me, but it sort of felt like I wasn’t anchored to anything. I was floating through my days doing the best I knew to simply survive.
As I was working on this chapter, I came across an article from a book on trauma care, and it summed up some of the most common responses to a cataclysmic event:
Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, . . . physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.2
To say that knowledge would’ve been helpful on my journey is an understatement, and I think that’s true for anyone experiencing the stress of a traumatic event. I’ve said for a long time that I didn’t think I had PTSD, but I knew I was affected by what happened to me because I felt “off.” Now I understand that I was experiencing the symptoms of stress after a trauma, which is different from PTSD—but more important, it is how the body naturally responds when things go wrong.
As I’ve been telling you my story, my goal has been to help you on your own journey. I’ve written as a guide, as someone who’s walked the trail before you and can point out the major milestones along the way. In some ways, I’ve written as if this experience was in the past—but that moment in church made me realize it remains part of my present-day life. I’m no longer as affected as I was, but I’m by no means 100 percent over the accident. I’m not sure I ever will be.
Just after the church service that produced my epiphany, I was driving around with Erik Hedegaard, a reporter from Rolling Stone who was in town to interview me for a profile ahead of my walk over the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua. We were driving around Sarasota, sort of charting out my routine by exploring the places where I train and practice, when I drove through an intersection just around the corner from where the accident happened.
Almost instantly, I was caught up in a flashback. I was back in the ambulance with Lijana, sirens blaring, medics working to care for her, and I could see through the windshield that we were making a left-hand turn toward the hospital. I could smell the blood and the antiseptics they were using; the moment was that real to me. I teared up in the car because the feelings and thoughts were so overwhelming—much to the Rolling Stone reporter’s dismay. I simply couldn’t help myself; I immediately thought about my great-grandfather and how much deeper his pain must have been after the accident in Detroit. How he handled that kind of emotional gut punch is beyond me. I was fortunate that no one was killed in our accident, but sitting there at that red light, I felt genuine despair for how I would have handled everything if that hadn’t been the case.
I share that to say that the aftermath of a life-changing event is inescapable. It permeates everything we do, and it goes with us everywhere. It’s said that time heals every wound, but that doesn’t mean the process will be easy or complete in my preferred timing. As a result, I’m still learning and growing from the challenges related to the accident, but I’m discovering that if I’m willing to dig in and address the fear, God is faithful to watch over me every step of the way.
So far I’ve talked a lot about my faith in the preceding chapters, and I’m going to continue sharing from that perspective now because it’s essential to who I am. If you’re reading this and you don’t agree with my convictions, that’s okay; you don’t have to believe as I do to learn from what I’m about to offer. We all experience moments when we need to reach beyond ourselves for strength, and that transcendence is what often pulls us through the hardest times we face.
Whether we find that transcendence through worship, meditation, or a walk in the woods, the power we need to heal often comes from somewhere outside of ourselves, and I want to acknowledge that with this chapter.
As I wrote in the last chapter, my first step toward facing my fear was figuring out what I needed to do mentally. Between my conversations with Erendira and Dieter, I was breaking down the shame I felt, each conversation simultaneously allowing me to identify the problem. Once I clearly understood what was going on, I was ready to move forward. By acknowledging the reality of my situation, I could focus on my training, which in turn prompted me to work on getting my heart realigned with God.
When I talk about realignment, I’m not talking about rededicating my life to Christ or even repenting of a specific sin. For me, it was returning to how I connected with God in my daily walk. I’m not a professional theologian, so I don’t want to step into territory where my opinion might not be welcomed, but I will say this: I experience and connect with God most powerfully through music. Whenever I listen to worship songs, I feel the presence of God in my life in a way I don’t experience with other forms. There’s a great book by Richard Foster called Celebration of Discipline that lists several ways Christians have historically connected with and experienced God, and while certain forms like prayer, study, and fasting are more commonly known, worship is one that Foster highlights, calling it “our human response to God’s divine initiative.”3
In recent years, I’ve put worship songs on repeat, leaning into this practice in a way I hadn’t before. It became clear to me that listening to the music was a way of praying—of allowing words of peace and victory to wash over me. That may sound strange to you, especially if I were to walk up to you on the street and ask you to define the word prayer. I think most people, religious or not, would say it’s something along the lines of “talking to God” or “a conversation with Jesus,” and those answers wouldn’t be wrong.
They also wouldn’t be enough.
Prayer is worship, worship is prayer, and it took the aftermath of the accident for me to really connect those dots. Whenever I’m on a wire now, I play my playlist and consider it praying. Once the music starts, my mind is stilled, my heart finds its rhythm, and I feel at home in the world.
If that sounds strange to you, it’s okay. Not everyone understands the feeling I’m trying to describe; there’s a definite otherworldly quality to the sensation of knowing you’re pleasing God with literally every step you take. I’ve spoken to other performers whose faiths are important to them—both in my line of work and in others—and I’ve heard a handful talk about the same thing. When they are playing their music or making their art, they have an overwhelming sense of how happy God is with them in that moment. I’ve met nonperformers—parents, grandparents, the occasional businessperson—who’ve said similar things, but there might be something particular to the performance crowd that makes the feeling I’m talking about a little more concrete. They get what I’m trying to say.
As I’ve said, I feel like God connects with me most powerfully through music. I’ve gravitated toward worship songs ever since I was a little kid. As early as when I was three, I was instantly transfixed by music whenever I heard it. In the car, my mom used to play these cassettes called Kids’ Praise! by Psalty the Singing Songbook. They were worship songs for kids, and I remember wearing out those tapes when I was younger. Eventually, Mom swapped them out for Christian artists like Keith Green and Phil Driscoll, but no matter what she played, music remained a conduit for me to understand and encounter God.
It’s not just Christian music, though that’s primarily what I listen to. I remember being in church one day, and the worship team opened with a song that was popular on the local pop station at the time, “Unwell” by Matchbox Twenty. It has a bit of a folksy flavor to it, but what arrested me were the lyrics, which talked about how the songwriter wasn’t crazy, just a little unwell—even if other people couldn’t tell the difference. I was especially moved by the way the lyrics spoke of the challenges of other people perceiving someone’s pain through a lens of judgment. I am a compassionate person, and sometimes when I hear a song that speaks to the struggles other people face or struggles that I can identify in my own life, I’m overcome with emotion. It’s a way of tapping into the deepest part of myself and letting God stir my soul.
A number of the songs on my playlist have at least one verse or chorus that deals with fear and overcoming it. I didn’t plan it that way; I chose the songs because they moved me as a whole, not just because they mentioned victory over fear. Chances are I would’ve actually tried to avoid them if I’d realized the common theme—I didn’t want to be reminded that I was afraid. I wanted the opposite feeling; I wanted to feel empowered. Strengthened. I wanted a sense that God was greater than my fear. One of the songs that came to mind often was “Surrounded (Fight My Battles)” by Michael W. Smith. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, but they spoke to me and gave me strength as I learned how to fight my battles: when it feels like I’m surrounded, I just have to remember that I’m surrounded by God.
When you’re fighting for control of your own heart and mind, you don’t necessarily need the most complex lyrics. You need something that speaks truth and peace and can keep you focused on both. The best songs are the ones that communicate the truth of God; the lyrics are not necessarily direct quotes from Scripture, but they have a lot of Scripture in them. I had plenty of these songs in my playlist:
“Stand in Your Love”—Josh Baldwin and Bethel Music
“You Make Me Brave”—Amanda Cook and Bethel Music
“Good, Good Father”—Chris Tomlin
“Behold”—Hillsong Worship
“Mighty to Save”—Hillsong Worship
“This I Believe”—Hillsong Worship
“Clean”—Natalie Grant
“Jesus”—Chris Tomlin
“Do It Again”—Elevation Worship
When I look back at my playlist now, one song really stands out: “No Longer Slaves” by Bethel Music featuring Jonathan David and Melissa Helser. The chorus simply repeats, “I am no longer a slave to fear / I am a child of God!”4 I mean, you couldn’t possibly get more on the nose than that, and yet those exact words weren’t what connected most with me at the time. It was the entire song, the whole work, that gave me strength when I listened to it. I was letting those words sink into my mind and my heart, absorbing them without processing them, but taking them in so they would be a constant prayer over me day after day, no matter how I was feeling. On days when I felt scared, I’d quote a lyric. On days when I had doubts, I’d sing a verse or two of something upbeat. If I worried about shaking or falling or just being out of control in general, I’d grab my earbuds, open my playlist, and let the song say what I couldn’t. I’d let the artists pray over me when I couldn’t pray over myself.
I’m reminded of when Satan was testing Jesus in the wilderness. This was before Jesus began preaching and teaching all over Israel; he was in the desert, and the Bible says that he’d been fasting for forty days. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried fasting, but three days is long enough for me to feel run-down and weak. After forty days, I imagine Jesus was beyond himself and very vulnerable—which is probably why Satan came to him then. He loves to hit people when they’re weakest.
Satan said to Jesus something like, “If you’re so hungry, why don’t you just turn one of these rocks into bread? Surely you have the power to do that.” Jesus answered him with scripture: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt. 4:4). Two more times Satan tempted Jesus—once to reveal his divine connection with God, and once to worship Satan and be given all power on earth. Each time, Jesus replied with a quote from the Bible. It strikes me that even in his weakest moments, the words Jesus likely had learned when he was a child came to his rescue.
That’s the way it is for me with praise music: the words that I’ve been hearing since I was a child, the words I continue to pour over my life today, are prayers that fight for me when I don’t know how to fight for myself. When I’m weak, those words give me strength. When I’m lost, they give me direction. When I need encouragement, they pick me up. When I need clarity, they provide focus, and when I need to overcome fear, they remind me that God is bigger than any fear I might have.
Maybe you have something like that in your own life. If you’re a person of faith, maybe you find that connection through prayer or hearing a good sermon. Or maybe you’re not religious at all but have a certain beach or place in the mountains you go to when you feel like giving up. For me, when I’m listening to good music, I know that God is with me. It goes beyond words, too—I’m moved not only by the lyrics but also by the way the music and words work together to tap into hidden emotions and thoughts that I don’t know how to express in other ways.
For as much as I love music, you would think that I’m a good singer. But funny enough, I’m not. I’m truly in the category of “make a joyful noise,” but it doesn’t diminish the experience for me at all. I’ll happily stand in the middle of a crowded church or stadium and let the music and the words and the voices wash over me. When that happens, I find peace in God.
That’s why I listen to praise music when I walk the wire—every time. It soothes me, takes away the nerves and the anxiety, and keeps me connected to God in a way that gives me power. I know when I’m walking, there’s a chance someone down below is wondering, How does he do that? My desire is that I would be so in tune with God that it would be obvious that supernatural power aids me across the wire. Interestingly, I don’t have worship music on during any pyramid wire act, but I do for almost all of my solo walks. But when I’ve got music in my ears, I feel as though my feet are stepping onto solid ground even as I’m hundreds of feet in the air.
Maybe it would work for you too.
While thinking through this chapter, I attempted to learn more about why music is so helpful to me when I walk. I’m more than happy to stop with the spiritual answer—that it’s how God meets with me—yet as I mentioned earlier, I know not everyone is religious. But that doesn’t mean the idea of music helping you past your fears doesn’t hold merit for you. In fact, according to science, it might be a key to helping you, even more than you realize.
Frontiers in Psychology is an online journal where you can access lots of papers written by qualified researchers and practitioners in the field. I was looking for something that not only explained the way music affected my brain but might also help someone who isn’t particularly religious. I found an article by seven different researchers that was a revelation for me. The basic idea of the paper was that music is a “potent mood regulator that can induce relaxation and reduce anxiety in different situations.”5 That’s good news in and of itself, but the way they came to their conclusion is what fascinated me.
The researchers set up an experiment that would induce people’s fear of heights, then tested to see how music helped them.
I couldn’t pass that up! While my fear wasn’t a fear of heights per se, it was the fear of what happened from a fall. I dug into the research and found that the scientists had their subjects put on virtual reality goggles, which simulated an elevator ride up the outside of a 106-story building. Forty participants were selected from a group of people who responded to an email sent to their university campus. Researchers gave each person something called an “Acrophobia Questionnaire,” which measures fear of heights. The participants had to be around eighteen years of age, and their responses had to range from no fear of heights to being petrified of them so the results would have a good mix. The scientists measured heart rate, skin response, balance, and head movements during the simulation, and then they measured each person’s experience of anxiety using a series of three questionnaires.6
They separated the participants into two groups: one group experienced the “elevator ride” with background music; the other experienced the ride without it. What they found was a significant increase in stress both objectively (through the measurements of heart rate, skin response, and so on) and subjectively in the group that experienced the ride without music. As a result, they concluded that “music can to some extent facilitate post-stress recovery.”7
Keep in mind that the music wasn’t chosen by the participants. It had little to no personal meaning for the people in the study—it was literally just elevator music being piped into a fake digital elevator ride. And yet there was still something comforting about it! Now imagine the difference it would have made if every participant could’ve selected their favorite song or a song that had meaning to them. It’s not a scientific conclusion, but it’s an easy one to draw: chances are pretty good those folks would’ve felt even better.
Maybe music doesn’t help calm you down or give you a connection to a power greater than yourself. Maybe you need to go for a run or play some golf or write a poem. Maybe you need to take slow drives through the country or spend time relaxing in a bath. Whatever your mechanism, you have tools at your disposal that can help you connect with the rest of yourself, beyond your conscious, walking-around mind, and those tools can be used to help you heal.
That’s my bigger point: use the tools you have to help you get better. My greatest tool is music because it helps me find the power that’s bigger than me; it helps me connect to the God of the universe who made everything and knows everything and holds everything—including my life—in his capable hands. That’s where I find my peace, in the truth of God’s existence, and it was something I lost after the accident in Sarasota. Once I got back to it, I began to notice a change, an increased confidence and a decreased stress level. I was able to tap back into my empathy and compassion for other people and rediscover my desire to use my work as a way to help people know God exists. I began to walk around the arena and pray for the people who would come see us perform, thanking God for their lives and praising him for my opportunity to do what I do for a living.
In short, I became myself again.
There were still days when I had to battle the fear and the anxiety, or just wrestle with being tired and weak. I’m not superhuman. I don’t heal faster than anyone else. But now that I know how to chase after my healing, things are different for me, and the spiritual component plays an important part—which is why I wrote this chapter.
Do whatever you need to do to restore your soul. Chase God. Chase waves. Climb a tree. Eat a great meal. Just make sure that while you’re working so hard with your mind to process what is going on in your life, you also work on your soul. Once you remember to care for your soul, you rediscover who you are and where your strength is, and that’s what it takes to continue the journey toward healing.
It wasn’t long after I had this breakthrough that I began to have thoughts about redeeming the accident. It was a mark on my family’s name and a black mark in my life, but it wasn’t beyond being redeemed by God. I knew another pyramid act wouldn’t cut it—I was already doing that in Atlantic City; and anyway, what I wrestled with wasn’t a need for redemption for myself. I had made my turn toward wholeness, and I would continue to walk that path. Instead, my mind pulled up someone else’s face, someone else who would need restoration in a way that would be long and hard and challenging. Someone who would need my help in more ways than one. I began thinking and dreaming and praying of the day when Lijana would walk a wire again. She just had to get past the hospital first and then go to work on overcoming her fear, just as I had overcome my own.
And she would have me by her side to help her do just that.