Cliff.

I suppose there is some truth is opposites attracting.

I was impossibly negative. And you were impossibly positive.

I was just waiting to see, out of the two of us, who would win this game of chance- what with the odds stacked against you like a towering cliff and the sheer enormity of the obstacles between us. I shrugged, with an all-knowing smile across my face, as if I knew Chance well, as if I knew her tricks and schemes, as if I knew the end from the start, that this would all be a waste of time, and the sooner we truncated the journey, the less of a tragedy we would face.

Chance, it happens once in a lifetime. What were the odds?

After all, how we met (can I even say we met?)… After all, how we crossed paths was a complete accident. I was just here, living life… and you were just way over there, living your own. How could you even dare to imagine the Possibility?

I didn’t know, that you’re a crazy dreamer like me, too. We pray dangerous prayers and make audacious requests because we know the impossible happens with a God filled with crazy love for us.

And I told myself you were crazy. Incredulous. I was appalled with your guts in the beginning. From the beginning to the end, I thought you were out of your mind. An impossible optimist bordering on the cusp of naivete. I made that quite clear to you. What was it that made you hold on to your dream instead of letting me shake you, I could never figure out.

I suppose, like me, you hold on fast to your dreams.

I forgot. We are both triathletes with unyielding wills, but between the two of us, you are the Iron man. And you outpersisted me in this one, for sure.

A year and a half ago, when you said what you said and even suggested the possibility of Us, I thought you were mad. Out of your mind. And a whirlwind weekend and hundreds of letters later, I wonder now, who has the last laugh.

Chance, enjoys her drama.

Because you’re coming. You’re actually coming.

…

I can’t believe you sold all you had. Resigned. Signed up for a missionary placement right where I was.

And yet, I can’t quite call you intoxicated either, because it seemed like a Greater force was behind you all the way. How did OMF (Overseas Mission Fellowship) offer you a missionary placement here of all places? Why was the job scope so similar to what you had been doing in your full-time job? How was it that your liver issues miraculously resolved when your liver markers were elevated for so long?

OMF required that you raise seventy-thousand Canadian dollars for a two-year placement here. It’s just the way some missions organisations run. And to think I opened up to you a little more after I learnt that, because I thought that it would be Impossible for you to make it here. How could all these doors open for you? It would take Chance a herculean effort to turn that possibility into reality.

I thought I was safe. From having to open up my eyes, my mind and my heart. I wanted to seal it in a glass bottle and throw it into the ocean.

Cliff. That name conjures danger. Danger because a step into the unknown could mean a fatal plunge. It brings to mind, risk.

In jumping of a cliff, there is 99% chance of death, and perhaps a less than 1% chance of… of what?

How could you even dare to think of the possibility?

Of flying.

Because even though you knew there was a big chance of things not working out, you said it didn’t matter, you wanted to risk it all and put all you had on the line, so on looking back, you’d have nothing to regret.

That’s exactly how I think, too.

We were strangers, living parallel lives in opposite time zones, though feeling the same sort of burdens and dreaming the same sort of impossible dreams for the poor. You nearly died from that cancer, and Chance, no, God saved you, and now you have a liver transplant shooting miracles through your veins. We are so many years apart from each other.

What a risk it was, is, if you think about it, for me to continue writing to you. I was crazy to even entertain you from the start.

I thought I was safe. There was the physical distance. There was $70’000 dollars. There was my parents(how would they even approve of this insanity?) There was my senior pastor (surely he would be appalled?) People had warned me that this might be mistake- there were just too many obstacles; they warned me of the side effects of the long-term medication you take for the liver transplant; they warned me of the financial inconveniences and the life of hardship that awaits one who partners a missionary.

Then there was me. My stoic, stone-cold heart trapped in a bottle that sat on fairytales like a paperweight.

How these things threatened to, but did not quench our faith baffles me.

I couldn’t believe just how supportive everyone is. How happy they are, in spite of my doubts and questions and fears and disbelief.

How could they say yes?

How did my heart change?

How did you manage to come?

 

You’re on the plane now.

 

As I write, you are moving closer and closer to my time zone now.

Does Chance laugh once in a while?

I guess, I’m still taking it in. Wondering what all this means, and reflecting on how far I’ve come, or is it… we?

Cliff. The name conjures risk. And I suppose, you risked it all to be so upfront from the beginning. And I guess, that was what won me. That iniative, courage and boldness to close your eyes to risk it all to take the plunge. What was there to lose?

Everything.

You had to sell your possessions. Quit your job. Say goodbye to everyone, to your life back there, in cold, wintry Canada to come to a hot, sweltering place like this.

This is not a holiday. This is serious stuff.

For what? To chase a dream that God gave you years ago to come to Asia to serve, and this is only a stepping stone to your dream to reach the lost and hurting in developing countries in Asia. To pursue that, and me.

I had to admit, I admired your guts. Like a cliff, you exude strength and stability, and yet, there is something so preciously vulnerable and fragile about you that captures me.

I guess, I forgot, the constancy of God, and the wild card that He throws on the table that overturns all the logical laws of statistics and possibility.

So even as we both took the plunge, I suddenly remembered, that cliffs are beautiful and remembered not for the deaths they cause, but for the flights they gave the opportunity to come into existence because of Faith. 

Once in a while, a leap into the unknown births wings made of dreams and flights of faith.

See you in a while, Cliff, at Terminal Two.

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We are afraid,” they said.

“Come to edge,” he said.

They came.

He pushed.

And they flew.

– Gullaume Appollinaire

“Perfect love drives out all fear.”

– 1 John 4:18