One of my earliest memories is the day I taught myself to ski. I trudged up the neighbor’s hill, tied crude wooden skis to my red boots and proceeded to spend the next hour falling face first into the snow. I was four years old.

The initial time my parents took my sisters and me to a legitimate ski slope, the child in front of us fell off the chairlift and broke his leg. My momentary concern was quickly eclipsed when I made it to the bottom and realized that I could do this all day—without ever having to walk up a hill. Since then, skiing has always been one of my favorite recreational activities.

Cue aging. Just before turning fifty, my shoulders locked down in a bizarre medical condition called adhesive capsulitis. On both sides. I’ll spare you the details but trust me, avoid this one if at all possible. As I finish my year-long physical therapy, I ask about resuming normal activities. No skiing. Of any kind. Too risky. One fall and you’ll be back where we started twelve months ago. The weight of his words crush me.

I decide to ignore him and go cross country skiing. But now, I am terrified of falling. (In my fifty years of downhill, I rarely ever fell.) After the first hour, I am cautiously optimistic. As the trail emerges from the woods, I hit a slushy patch. The skis stop and I pitch forward. To correct, I instinctively tighten my untoned abs and fling my upper body backward—apparently with a bit too much force—and land in a sitting position on my skis.

I am stuck. My shoulders are too weak for me to roll onto them and push myself up and my quads are too weak to stand up from this position. So there I sit, on my skis in the middle of nowhere, with no cell phone. Panic turns to laughter at the absurdity of the situation. Until my thighs start burning from being in such a contracted position and then it stops being so funny. After much pushing and straining, the likes of which can probably only be understood by very pregnant women putting on stockings, eventually, I do get up—relieved that no one witnessed my fiasco.

I’ve cross country skied every year since then. As much as I enjoy breaking a sweat doing something other than shoveling during our New England winters, cross country skiing lacks both the thrill and the ease of alpine. In order to experience the glorious downhills, one has to first duck-walk, huffing and puffing, up those inclines.

I often find myself praying while skiing. This past week when I approached the final uphill of the course, I let the Almighty know I’d prefer a season of downhill, complete with a heated bubble chairlift. But if the past five years are any indication, cross country is the new normal and rather than pining for the past or something different, I need to settle into this new reality which includes diminishing energy, parental health crises, financial uncertainty, and the nagging feeling that the last segment of my life might look very different than what I imagined. Not bad, mind you, but different.

To make it through this season, I’m going to need that same determination that helped me to get up and keep trying when I was four. I’ve never been a quitter and have no intention becoming one now. Though I prefer downhill, I’m hoping and praying that His joy will become my strength and I’ll learn how to crank up those hills with renewed energy and purpose. Since the snow—four feet and counting—will most likely be here until May, it looks like I’ll have lots of practice. Tune in for updates.

(Perhaps it was the power of suggestion but I did indeed feel a bit bovine this week as I pushed my aging body across the trails.)