Standing at the Edge: When You Can't See What Comes Next

There's something terrifying about being eighteen. We romanticize it as adults—the freedom, the possibilities, the whole world stretching out ahead. But if we're honest, eighteen is less about confidence and more about standing on the edge of a cliff you can't see the bottom of, hoping that when you jump, something will catch you.

The question haunts: Am I enough for what comes next?

The Boy Who Dove Like a Sack of Potatoes
In 1984, in a coal mining town so small the horizon felt like a wall, a young Polish boy named Jerzy Dudek watched his mother descend into the mine. When she emerged, she was weeping. She grabbed her sons and made them promise never to go down into those depths.

But the boys were practical. They looked around at their impoverished town and thought, What else are we going to do?

The future felt already written. The mine was right there. The path was clear.

Young Jerzy loved football—soccer, as Americans call it—but his family was so poor they played with rubber balls. He put on his father's mining gloves and drew the Adidas logo on them with a black marker, pretending they were real goalkeeper gloves. He wasn't very good. One coach told him bluntly: "You dive like a sack of potatoes."

By seventeen, Jerzy was in vocational training to become a miner, working underground two days a week. By twenty-one, he was making just over $100 a month playing semi-professional football. Everything had stalled. He would later say he felt himself "melting into the grayness."

Twenty-one years old, and the grayness was winning.

When the Disciples Couldn't See What Was Next
In the Book of Acts, we find Jesus' disciples on a hillside outside Jerusalem. They had followed him for three years, witnessed miracles, experienced resurrection. And now, in this liminal moment, they asked the only question they could think to ask: "Lord, is this when you're going to restore the kingdom? Is this when things will finally make sense?"

Jesus looked at these people he loved and said something both terrifying and liberating: "It's not for you to know the times or the periods."

You cannot see where this is going.

And then he ascended. A cloud took him. They stood there with their mouths open, staring at the sky until messengers appeared and essentially said: "Why are you standing here staring? Get moving."

That's the paradox of faith in two sentences: You cannot see where this is going. Get moving anyway.

The Miracle of Istanbul
Fast forward to May 25, 2005. That coal miner's son from Poland is now standing in goal for Liverpool Football Club in the Champions League final in Istanbul, Turkey. Against all odds, Jerzy Dudek had made it to one of the most prestigious matches in world football.

The game began catastrophically. AC Milan scored in the first 51 seconds. By halftime, Liverpool was down 3-0—a gap nearly insurmountable in football.

In the locker room, everyone was broken. But rising through the stands above them came the sound of 40,000 people singing Liverpool's anthem: "You'll Never Walk Alone." They weren't singing with belief that Liverpool would win. They were singing in sympathy, in solidarity with defeat.

But here's the thing about courage: it doesn't always wait for belief to show up first.
Liverpool scored three goals in nine minutes. The match went to extra time. With 90 seconds left, Dudek made an unbelievable double save—two point-blank shots in the space of a single heartbeat.

Then came penalties.

The Wobbly Leg Moment
Dudek had spent thousands of hours practicing penalty saves. His method was precise: stand stock still in the middle of the goal, wait until the last microsecond, guess which way the shooter would go, then dive. Ten thousand hours makes mastery. He had the mastery.
But then Liverpool's captain jumped on his back and screamed in his ear: "Remember Bruce Grobbelaar!"

Grobbelaar was Liverpool's goalkeeper decades earlier who, facing a similar penalty shootout, had grabbed the net and done wobbly spaghetti legs, dancing around, getting into the shooter's head. It worked.

Now Dudek faced a choice. Everything he knew about saving penalties said: stand still, be controlled, be precise, trust your preparation.

But there are moments in life when what you've practiced isn't enough. When someone jumps on your back with unexpected wisdom. When the unconventional thing is the faithful thing.

Dudek did the wobbly legs. His wife, watching from Poland, didn't recognize her husband. "I couldn't believe he danced so crazily."

Liverpool won. It became known as the Miracle of Istanbul.

Casting Anxiety While Standing Firm
The First Letter of Peter offers seemingly contradictory advice: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Then immediately: "Stay alert, resist, stand firm."

This is wobbly leg theology—not passive, not white-knuckling it, but casting your fear onto someone who can hold it, then being alert enough to recognize when the unconventional thing is the faithful thing.

In John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples the night before his death. He's on the edge of something they cannot see. His prayer isn't advice or a to-do list. It's simply: "Holy Father, protect them."

The deepest thing that can be said to someone facing an unknown future isn't strategy. It's prayer.

You Cannot See the Future Coming
Someone should have told that boy standing outside a coal mine in Poland that he would win the European Cup with spaghetti legs his own wife wouldn't recognize. But you can't see the future coming—not the terrors, certainly, but also not the wonders, the moments of light-soaked joy that await.

You're holding two things at once: gratitude and grief. You're letting go while still standing in what you're leaving. You're in a doorway where past and future are trying to speak at the same time.

The Psalmist writes that God gives the desolate a home—not the confident, not the prepared, but the desolate, the ones who don't know where they belong yet.

You are not being released into the unknown alone. You're being sent. And that's an entirely different thing. You're being sent with a word, a prayer, a promise that the one who ascended does not leave you without resource.

You will receive power. You do not go alone.

So when you stand at your own edge, unable to see what comes next, remember: sometimes you stand still and trust your training. And sometimes you do the wobbly legs.

Both can be acts of faith.