Lace up your Boots: The Sacred Moment Right Before the Leap

There’s this moment in every great adventure, whether it’s on a ridgeline with a storm rolling in or standing at the edge of a decision that could change your life. It's the moment when all the talking stops. No more analyzing how you got here. No more strategizing. No more weighing options.

Only fierce commitment.

I remember one trip in particular. An adventure that turned, unexpectedly, into something far more intense than what we’d signed up for. Weather shifted. Distances misjudged. Water supply miscalculated. All the stuff that, individually, you can laugh off later—but combined, they created a moment where the safest decision available… wasn’t safe at all.

We did the dance that every team in crisis does, sifted through possible options, argued about the past, debated the path forward. And then, like all real adventures eventually demand, we had to unify around a plan that wasn’t everyone’s favorite. A plan that was hard. Risky. Taxing. I felt afraid of both the consequence of failure and the physical pain of success.

And then came the moment.

That sacred pause before execution. When the weight of what’s coming settles into your bones and you realize—this is it. This is the test. This is the part of the story that shapes who you are. You could call it terrifying, but it’s also thrilling. There’s clarity. Focus. Unity. And a strangely electric sense of honor. Fear can no longer trick you by disguising it's self as wisdom becuase the decision has been made - fear has become irrelevent.

Because you get to choose: Will you be the one who says yes? Will you step forward when everything in you craves comfort? Will you cross the chicken line and find out what you’re really made of?

...and then you lace up your boots

I think that's why the recent release from Circuit Rider hit me SO HARD at Whit's graduation. My body feels this at foundational level and it shakes an area of my soul that caries deep emotion:

Lace up your boots.
Put on your backpack.
It’s time to ride.

I really wasn't expecting to be emotionally wrecked as an observer at a graduation - but every word landed hard.

When you walk with God, you find yourself at intersections like this more often than the average person. You’ve prayed. You’ve asked for wisdom. You’ve sought counsel. You’ve journaled and cried and laid your dream on the altar more times than you can count. But eventually, your discerning season ends. And a new one begins.

The one where you lace up your boots.

The moment that separates the IDEA of adventure from the reality of it. It’s one thing to want to live by faith. It’s another thing to bet everything on what you think God said. To walk away from comfort. To endure being misunderstood. To sacrifice proximity to people you love. To stand in the tension between obedience and uncertainty. To pay a real price in return for value that people around you don't see.

This is where many people stall out—not because they lack love for God, but because they don’t trust they really heard Him. And they’re afraid of the consequences if they didn’t.

But faith has never pretended to be the absence of risk. It’s the decision to move forward, knowing that obedience makes your heart race more than certainty. That your Father is good enough to catch you, even if your leap is messy.

So if you’re standing at the edge of something right now. Some God-prompted “crazy” idea, some costly act of obedience, some move that doesn’t make sense to the world—I just want to tell you: the time for pondering might be done.

It might be time to lace up your boots.

To put on your backpack.

It’s time to ride.

...If you know someone who's ready to ride. Send this their way. There's more coming soon.