Kenny Vaughn: Surrendering Your Fear

CBN.com “I have to line up just right behind the boat and check my speed,” Kenny says. “I cross over right before the jump and accelerate to over 60 miles per hour. One slip now and I’ll be in the hospital for sure.”

Kenny Vaughan can tell you anything you’d like to know about long distance water-ski jumping. After all, this native of Beaumont, Texas, has been competing in the sport since he was a kid.

“I started waterskiing when I was eleven years old, and I learned behind just a little flat bottomed boat with a 15 horsepower Evinrude motor on it,” Kenny says.

But what started out as a pastime, turned into a passion one day when he noticed a gold medal framed in his coach’s office.

“I asked him what it was and he told me it was a national championship medal. And at that moment, I mean, I wanted one. So I set out to get one,” he says.

But the journey to a national championship hasn’t been without its setbacks.

“I’ve broken this leg, this foot twice, my arm more recently, pulled some ligaments in my knee, I’ve been knocked unconscious…,” Kenny says.

It hasn’t been injuries, though, that posed his biggest obstacle to success – it was something else.

“Fear of failing started taking over,” Kenny admits. “I was trying to win. I was totally prepared physically and mentally. But spiritually I was totally unprepared. And the fear of failure was a spiritual fear.

When you give it everything you have, and I gave it everything. I started training seven days a week, everything I knew to become a better skier, and then when I got back to the nationals and still had the fear, it just devastated me.”

So, he quit.

Beaten and depressed, Kenny put his gear away in a closet and stopped skiing for good. But for the next five years, the spiritual problem remained. Then, he met Tammie.

“When I met her, I wanted her to know I could ski. I wanted to show off. Hot doggin’, you know. So I brought her out and showed her I knew how to jump. And one thing led to another. Once I went over that ramp again the dream started coming back,” Kenny says.

Kenny got back into competition, and after two years he was competing again at the national level. But when he arrived at the championships, those old feelings of inadequacy were waiting and Tammie sensed that something was wrong.

“I could tell just by looking in his eyes and his face at the tournaments that there was something that went deeper that was missing – that he was struggling with,” Tammie recalls. “And I knew that it wasn’t mental. It wasn’t physical. It was spiritual.”

“None of the coaches that I’ve ever worked with could tell me how to overcome that spiritual fear. It was always work harder, train harder, get better, and learn to deal with fear - it’s a part of it. But she knew what God’s word says, that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of a sound mind. So she took those scriptures and wrote them on my water-ski handle,” Kenny says.

“In my personal life, I was always taught to go to God’s Word and see what it said about the situation that I was in. And I think that that was the only way I knew, and I wanted to give him a piece of that,” she says.

“I always loved and feared God. But I didn’t have a relationship with him, I didn’t know anything about the power of His word. Nothing. I didn’t even want to pray for the small things,” Kenny confesses.

Once Kenny started learning to claim God’s promises in his life, things began to change.

“When I learned to act on God’s Word, that’s when I went from being the most fearful, really to the most bold,” he says.

When the 1996 season came around, Kenny went to nationals with a new mindset.

“I was going to have to jump five feet further than I’ve ever jumped. This guy had really put a long jump out in front of me,” Kenny says. “My first jump was a good jump. I jumped a foot short of him. But my second jump I crashed and busted a boot on my ski. With the damage…we get three minutes to make any repairs…I didn’t have time to fix anything. So all of a sudden all of the fear was back. And the circumstances were bad, it didn’t seem like I had – to me I didn’t see how I could win the nationals anymore. I just decided I’m going to do the best I can for you, Lord, until I’m finished. Regardless of my circumstances, I’m going to do the best I can for you.”

Surrendering his fear led to a 179-foot jump and a gold medal, the fulfillment of Kenny’s boyhood dream.

“I’ll always treasure that medal because of what God did for me. But the greatest trophy I have is the spiritual triumph, the being able to function with a sound mind, the power of God’s Word in my life. And then everything that’s come out of it,” he says.

Not long after that victory, Kenny and Tammie were married. But that’s not the end of the story.

Kenny took those verses and began having them inscribed on dog tags, which he would wear as a reminder to put his faith into action. God used these tiny metal trinkets to create a ministry bigger than Kenny could have ever dreamed.

“Now we’ve printed about a 1.3 million of them. About 500,000 are being worn by the military, the rest are being sold in Christian bookstores and are being worn be people all over the country. My prayer is that if they are facing the same fears I was, challenges, and that this can be their water-ski handle,” Kenny says.

“Had God given me the championship when I was fourteen or fifteen, all I would have to show for it would be a gold medal. Since I had to come through all the trials and all the hard knocks to learn to act on His Word to finally have my dream come true. Now I’ve got so much more character and so much more of the power of His Word in my relationship with Him that goes beyond water skiing to encompass my whole life and every challenge and fear that I ever face.”