Leaning into Faith

Jonah Smeltzer, Director of Communications

There are a lot of things that take a lot of faith to accomplish. If you don’t have faith, you’re not going to have the chance to move forward because you’re scared of what might happen.

During the past few months, I have been getting back into skateboarding. There was a time quite a while ago, maybe when I was in fifth or sixth grade, when I gave it a shot for the first time. That only lasted a couple weeks before I gave it up. Probably because I would always have to ask my mom to drive me to the old skatepark by the Cranberry Municipal Center.

Fast forward to today - I can drive myself to the newer, cooler skatepark in Zelienople! I’m taking my progress slow and steady, mainly just cruising around and doing little tricks, but I feel like the next step for me is to “Drop in”

Dropping in is when you stand at the top end of a steep slope with the board up, and you stomp on the board and ride down the ramp. The main thing you have to do in order to land it correctly is to lean all the way forward, so you don’t fall backwards and the board slips from under your feet. This is a major test of faith.

The actual trick isn’t the hard part. The main obstacle is getting over that fear and just committing to leaning forward as much as you can. When you have true faith, you aren’t thinking of the things that might go wrong at that moment. You are trusting that you can do what it takes to succeed, and not weigh down your life by thinking of the things that may go wrong.