Why Keep Climbing?
You know what? Climbing a mountain is hard. Really hard. It is not like it looks on television. Remember in one of the Mission Impossible movies where Tom Cruise is hanging off the top of a huge cliff with one hand? Yeah, totally not like that for me. I would never even make it halfway up that mountain. Heck, the only way I would get anywhere close to the top is if a helicopter dropped me there (which technically I believe is what Tom Cruise did anyway!).
Climbing is hard work. It takes endurance, which I have never really had. I am kind of a quitter. Maybe that is because I was always pretty good at things and did not have to work real hard to get good grades or to be athletic. I was one of those annoying kids who never studied but still got all A’s. I decided one day that I wanted to try out for softball and had never tried to play. I practiced one night with my dad teaching me how to throw “like a boy” and made the team as a starter.
Because most things were so easy for me, I did not take a whole lot of risks. While it sounds like a risk to try out for the softball team…I really only did it after I was completely comfortable at school and my friend was doing it with me. And I knew I could just quit if it got hard.
My childhood was marked by half finished projects. My mom was really craftsy. Kind of a Martha Stewart type before Martha was popular (or in jail for that matter). I remember she was always getting me started on projects. She taught me how to crochet…but I did not have the patience to learn anything but the basic stitch so I made a big long chain and was done. She taught me how to knit and it was the same thing…I don’t think I even finished that potholder.
Remember latch hook rugs? I thought for a while that I had finally found a craft I could do. It took no skill whatsoever. There was this big mesh canvas with large holes in it shaped like a giant ladybug or frog or something. The canvas was color-coded. All you had to do was take individual pieces of yarn in different colors and tie it with a little hook on each section of the canvas to make a rug. I would sit for hours and hook that thing…for about 3 days and then it got thrown in my closet and I ended up throwing it away years later. Actually I think I had four or five of them that I hopefully started and ended up throwing away.
Recently we moved to a new house and I found a box with a large portfolio of stuff from my childhood and realized that it illustrated this concept for me. There was the folder of guitar music from the winter I decided to learn to play. I went to 2 lessons and then gave up because it was hard. There was 3 half finished stories I wrote the summer I was 11 and decided I wanted to be the next great American novelist. There was my scrapbooking supplies along with a huge box of pictures just waiting to go in an album.
The theme to my quitting things or leaving things half finished is that it got hard. And why work hard when I could watch the Brady Bunch or read a book?
I remember my first trip to Colorado when I was in high school. We were on a mission trip with our youth group where we had spent a week in Saint Louis working and were to take a week in Estes Park doing ropes courses and mountain rappelling for fun and team building. I remember getting to Saint Louis and feeling like a total wimp. We had to split onto 3 teams and do things like drywall and dig a riverbed or work in a homeless shelter. I doubted I had the strength or stamina to do any drywall or digging so I volunteered to work in the homeless shelter. Definitely the safe choice. Everyone was sweating with no air conditioning during a heat wave and I was the ONLY one on my team sitting in an air-conditioned office answering phones and telling homeless people we had no shelter for them. It was a stretching experience in some ways and in some ways I know it was a safe choice. There was not a lot of risk involved for me.
So- we get to Colorado and find out the first day we have to climb up a trail and rappel down a mountain. Now you would think I would be afraid to rappel from up high. But actually I was more afraid of climbing the mountain and not being able to make it. I thought I would be too out of shape and fall behind. So halfway up the mountain I twisted my knee (not totally on purpose…I had an old basketball injury but I knew how to aggravate it) and ended up crawling down the mountain by myself and watching everyone rappel and have the time of their lives. To this day I regret not pushing through and doing it. I was embarrassed and compared myself to others and their ability to do something physical. I was too worried about failing to even try. I just gave up…and missed out. The rest of the week I sat in the cabin with ice on my knee while everyone else had adventures and stretched themselves on ropes courses and hiking the beautiful mountains of Colorado.
Quitting things has marked the journey of my life. But there is one thing I have never given up on and that is God. I have always kept on walking the journey with God even when it got hard. I don’t fully know why that is.
Especially because I am such a quitter.
Maybe because deep down in the core of my being I KNOW that getting closer to God is fulfilling and worthwhile. I KNOW that there is a reason for everything I go through. I KNOW that I can be God’s friend and He can fill that hole deep inside of me. I KNOW I can’t do this life on my own and I am more afraid to do life on my own than I am afraid to keep going when it gets hard.
I have to keep trying. There are times I get frustrated and it would be so much easier to quit and give up. To just sit down and say…that is it.
I am done.
I’m out.
Crawl back down the mountain and watch from the sidelines. But I can’t do that. Everything inside me rebels at that…and I get so frustrated when I see others do that.
Maybe one reason is because I also love change. Part of the quitting thing is because I get bored easily. So change is not as hard for me as it is for others. I see it as an opportunity to learn and grow and experience different things. I also see it as a way to change things in my life that I don’t like or want.
I have a friend who doesn’t like change so much. She will tell you that it is really hard for her. She wants everything to stay the same. She wants to stay in her same group of friends, have her same routine, and keep control of her life. She fights any change that comes her way…I think deep down it makes her feel in control and safe to have things not change.
The thing is- she tries so hard to control her circumstances that she is stuck. She is single and wants to get married someday. But she hangs out every weekend with the same people – going to the same restaurants, watching movies. She doesn’t take a whole lot of relational risks…she keeps her cards pretty close to her chest. She doesn’t tell people much about herself and I find my conversations with her all pretty much the same, very surface level and basic. She can’t meet a guy to marry because she is always hanging out with her same friends and other people look into her circle and think it is cliquish.
I hadn’t hung out with this friend in a long time and had lunch with her recently. So much had changed in my life since I had seen her…new job, new relationships, new small group experiences, new learnings with God, new house. I spent the whole lunch with her listening to her tell me the same stories about the same group of people doing the same thing as the year before. I started realizing that I could totally predict what she was going to say next because I had heard it all before. I felt like a completely different person and she was exactly the same.
It made me so sad.
I wanted to shout at her…TAKE A RISK! Learn something new. Make a new friend. Dive into a topic that doesn’t involve you and makes you uncomfortable. Confront those dark places inside of you that you are afraid of. Go to a church service not just to see your friends…but also to ingest the truth and APPLY it to your life. Let SOMEONE in….let God in to mold you and shape you.
But she was clueless. She had given up. She had stopped climbing and did not even realize how much was out there she had not yet seen. She did not realize that the new experiences were not going to come find her. She had to go find them. And yes, it is hard. Very hard. Especially when you are walking through the dark places. When you are climbing the steep pathways where there are no footholds. When you realize you are at a dead end and have to retrace your steps and try a new path.
You keep climbing because you HAVE to. You can’t stop or you won’t have any new adventures. Life becomes worthless -without any meaning at all. It is a routine of the same thing over and over. My soul would wither and die.
George Mallory was asked 'Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?'. This was a crazy notion back in 1922. His answer has become a mantra for mountain climbers over the years.
"Because it is there."
Because you see it for all of its glory and you can’t NOT climb it…explore it. Most of the people who set out to climb Mount Everest don’t actually make it to the summit. Does that mean it was all pointless? I don’t think so. Reporters could not understand George Mallory’s answer about the mountain and I love what he said next.
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."
Why climb? Because Jesus came to give us life on this earth. Not survival. Not drudgery. Not safety…but life. Life to the full. Life full of adventure and abundance. We can’t live life to the fullest when we are sitting in our bedrooms watching MTV. We can’t live life to the fullest when we go to work, come home, eat dinner, sleep and get up and do the same thing all over again. We can only live life to the fullest when we risk. When we keep climbing even when we are tired. When we put one foot in front of the other every day. Never giving up. Finding meaning for ourselves. Engaging in the questions. Confronting the pain and uncertainty. Taking risks to get out of our comfort zone…even when we don’t fully understand the reason why.
People who are mountain climbers are a strange breed. They are not like everyone else. They crave adventure. They see beauty. They push themselves beyond physical limitations. They get hurt and endure discomfort and pain. Isn’t there something deep inside your soul that resonates with that? That cries out for the adventure…and wants to embrace it despite the unknown?
Why climb?
Because it is there.
Because we can.
Because we have to in order to fully be alive. This is something I don’t want to quit…maybe for the first time in my life.
Climbing is hard work. It takes endurance, which I have never really had. I am kind of a quitter. Maybe that is because I was always pretty good at things and did not have to work real hard to get good grades or to be athletic. I was one of those annoying kids who never studied but still got all A’s. I decided one day that I wanted to try out for softball and had never tried to play. I practiced one night with my dad teaching me how to throw “like a boy” and made the team as a starter.
Because most things were so easy for me, I did not take a whole lot of risks. While it sounds like a risk to try out for the softball team…I really only did it after I was completely comfortable at school and my friend was doing it with me. And I knew I could just quit if it got hard.
My childhood was marked by half finished projects. My mom was really craftsy. Kind of a Martha Stewart type before Martha was popular (or in jail for that matter). I remember she was always getting me started on projects. She taught me how to crochet…but I did not have the patience to learn anything but the basic stitch so I made a big long chain and was done. She taught me how to knit and it was the same thing…I don’t think I even finished that potholder.
Remember latch hook rugs? I thought for a while that I had finally found a craft I could do. It took no skill whatsoever. There was this big mesh canvas with large holes in it shaped like a giant ladybug or frog or something. The canvas was color-coded. All you had to do was take individual pieces of yarn in different colors and tie it with a little hook on each section of the canvas to make a rug. I would sit for hours and hook that thing…for about 3 days and then it got thrown in my closet and I ended up throwing it away years later. Actually I think I had four or five of them that I hopefully started and ended up throwing away.
Recently we moved to a new house and I found a box with a large portfolio of stuff from my childhood and realized that it illustrated this concept for me. There was the folder of guitar music from the winter I decided to learn to play. I went to 2 lessons and then gave up because it was hard. There was 3 half finished stories I wrote the summer I was 11 and decided I wanted to be the next great American novelist. There was my scrapbooking supplies along with a huge box of pictures just waiting to go in an album.
The theme to my quitting things or leaving things half finished is that it got hard. And why work hard when I could watch the Brady Bunch or read a book?
I remember my first trip to Colorado when I was in high school. We were on a mission trip with our youth group where we had spent a week in Saint Louis working and were to take a week in Estes Park doing ropes courses and mountain rappelling for fun and team building. I remember getting to Saint Louis and feeling like a total wimp. We had to split onto 3 teams and do things like drywall and dig a riverbed or work in a homeless shelter. I doubted I had the strength or stamina to do any drywall or digging so I volunteered to work in the homeless shelter. Definitely the safe choice. Everyone was sweating with no air conditioning during a heat wave and I was the ONLY one on my team sitting in an air-conditioned office answering phones and telling homeless people we had no shelter for them. It was a stretching experience in some ways and in some ways I know it was a safe choice. There was not a lot of risk involved for me.
So- we get to Colorado and find out the first day we have to climb up a trail and rappel down a mountain. Now you would think I would be afraid to rappel from up high. But actually I was more afraid of climbing the mountain and not being able to make it. I thought I would be too out of shape and fall behind. So halfway up the mountain I twisted my knee (not totally on purpose…I had an old basketball injury but I knew how to aggravate it) and ended up crawling down the mountain by myself and watching everyone rappel and have the time of their lives. To this day I regret not pushing through and doing it. I was embarrassed and compared myself to others and their ability to do something physical. I was too worried about failing to even try. I just gave up…and missed out. The rest of the week I sat in the cabin with ice on my knee while everyone else had adventures and stretched themselves on ropes courses and hiking the beautiful mountains of Colorado.
Quitting things has marked the journey of my life. But there is one thing I have never given up on and that is God. I have always kept on walking the journey with God even when it got hard. I don’t fully know why that is.
Especially because I am such a quitter.
Maybe because deep down in the core of my being I KNOW that getting closer to God is fulfilling and worthwhile. I KNOW that there is a reason for everything I go through. I KNOW that I can be God’s friend and He can fill that hole deep inside of me. I KNOW I can’t do this life on my own and I am more afraid to do life on my own than I am afraid to keep going when it gets hard.
I have to keep trying. There are times I get frustrated and it would be so much easier to quit and give up. To just sit down and say…that is it.
I am done.
I’m out.
Crawl back down the mountain and watch from the sidelines. But I can’t do that. Everything inside me rebels at that…and I get so frustrated when I see others do that.
Maybe one reason is because I also love change. Part of the quitting thing is because I get bored easily. So change is not as hard for me as it is for others. I see it as an opportunity to learn and grow and experience different things. I also see it as a way to change things in my life that I don’t like or want.
I have a friend who doesn’t like change so much. She will tell you that it is really hard for her. She wants everything to stay the same. She wants to stay in her same group of friends, have her same routine, and keep control of her life. She fights any change that comes her way…I think deep down it makes her feel in control and safe to have things not change.
The thing is- she tries so hard to control her circumstances that she is stuck. She is single and wants to get married someday. But she hangs out every weekend with the same people – going to the same restaurants, watching movies. She doesn’t take a whole lot of relational risks…she keeps her cards pretty close to her chest. She doesn’t tell people much about herself and I find my conversations with her all pretty much the same, very surface level and basic. She can’t meet a guy to marry because she is always hanging out with her same friends and other people look into her circle and think it is cliquish.
I hadn’t hung out with this friend in a long time and had lunch with her recently. So much had changed in my life since I had seen her…new job, new relationships, new small group experiences, new learnings with God, new house. I spent the whole lunch with her listening to her tell me the same stories about the same group of people doing the same thing as the year before. I started realizing that I could totally predict what she was going to say next because I had heard it all before. I felt like a completely different person and she was exactly the same.
It made me so sad.
I wanted to shout at her…TAKE A RISK! Learn something new. Make a new friend. Dive into a topic that doesn’t involve you and makes you uncomfortable. Confront those dark places inside of you that you are afraid of. Go to a church service not just to see your friends…but also to ingest the truth and APPLY it to your life. Let SOMEONE in….let God in to mold you and shape you.
But she was clueless. She had given up. She had stopped climbing and did not even realize how much was out there she had not yet seen. She did not realize that the new experiences were not going to come find her. She had to go find them. And yes, it is hard. Very hard. Especially when you are walking through the dark places. When you are climbing the steep pathways where there are no footholds. When you realize you are at a dead end and have to retrace your steps and try a new path.
You keep climbing because you HAVE to. You can’t stop or you won’t have any new adventures. Life becomes worthless -without any meaning at all. It is a routine of the same thing over and over. My soul would wither and die.
George Mallory was asked 'Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?'. This was a crazy notion back in 1922. His answer has become a mantra for mountain climbers over the years.
"Because it is there."
Because you see it for all of its glory and you can’t NOT climb it…explore it. Most of the people who set out to climb Mount Everest don’t actually make it to the summit. Does that mean it was all pointless? I don’t think so. Reporters could not understand George Mallory’s answer about the mountain and I love what he said next.
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."
Why climb? Because Jesus came to give us life on this earth. Not survival. Not drudgery. Not safety…but life. Life to the full. Life full of adventure and abundance. We can’t live life to the fullest when we are sitting in our bedrooms watching MTV. We can’t live life to the fullest when we go to work, come home, eat dinner, sleep and get up and do the same thing all over again. We can only live life to the fullest when we risk. When we keep climbing even when we are tired. When we put one foot in front of the other every day. Never giving up. Finding meaning for ourselves. Engaging in the questions. Confronting the pain and uncertainty. Taking risks to get out of our comfort zone…even when we don’t fully understand the reason why.
People who are mountain climbers are a strange breed. They are not like everyone else. They crave adventure. They see beauty. They push themselves beyond physical limitations. They get hurt and endure discomfort and pain. Isn’t there something deep inside your soul that resonates with that? That cries out for the adventure…and wants to embrace it despite the unknown?
Why climb?
Because it is there.
Because we can.
Because we have to in order to fully be alive. This is something I don’t want to quit…maybe for the first time in my life.
posted by Amie at 2:34 PM
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