Choosing to Stand
There are usually two analogies people use in order to explain the way life goes. Sometimes it’s a race and and sometimes it’s the mountain. I like both, but lately the mountain has felt more true.
In the last year, choosing to stand on the mountain and walk upward has been a journey in itself. Not even a year ago, I couldn’t tell you I was actively participating in my own life. I had seasons of “doing the things” for a time, but it felt like an uphill battle to even step foot on the mountain that meant being confident, standing for what I believed in, what I wanted in life, and taking the steps I needed in order to get there.
When I find myself in a place like that, it’s hard to imagine the future place I long to be in. But like most around the globe, the last two years have given me a reset and helped me realign, finding what it was that I’ve been longing for, helping me find the courage to step onto the mountain in the first place.
A little over a year ago, I sat on a playground bench with a friend and talked about my writing. I had finally made the decision to enter into one of the wildest adventures in the middle of my own New Hampshire backyard. My friend asked me how I’d respond to God if He asked me to lay the current project I had been working on down so I could pick up something far greater; something that would, in the long run, enhance my writing if I give Him the chance to come inside. I responded in anger and told her “no, this is my project. That cannot be His heart.”
But I was wrong.
When we take a look at the heart of a Father, there is love and there is joy, but there is also correction. Without correction, children would never learn. It’s like when your child decides to make a decision you have asked him or her not to, but they do it anyway. When that happens, they get upset because there are consequences, but it’s a lesson in correction for the child. Hopefully, eventually… They learn.
In the same way, the Father uses situations in our lives to teach us lessons and grow us into people who understand correction and love. In the same vein of captivity and freedom, you cannot know one without the other. Both are needed to learn the true heart of love.
When I entered into a time of learning God and His heart toward humanity, you can imagine I was angry, ready to throw in the towel before the true journey even began. As I took one step closer to God, though, I kept my project and so many other things behind my back, thinking I could continue like I always had. But as I continued in the way of hiddenness, rebellion, pride, and arrogance (i.e. thinking I knew what was best), things were continually taken away or withheld from me. The project that I had been working on slowly lost it’s splendor in the throes of learning his heart. Selfishness lost it’s battle and I see now where it all was teaching me a lesson on what it means to go low and surrender my projects, ways, and plans up to Him.
That way, while narrower, is much more fruitful. It’s far more satisfying and far more humbling to stand up and walk the mountain of letting God change your perspective into something greater. We are always looking for the mountaintop, but forget that the journey in the valley is what ultimately makes the view worth it. The view where you can look around or back with God and say “wow, we climbed that? We worked through that? We did that?”
And the Father, in His loving voice — after many corrective measures — will say “yes, yes you did.”
I used to see God as a scary corrective Father, which is why I often hid or cowered in the face of making mistakes or doing something I knew I shouldn’t. But in His loving grace and kindness and several real application stories lived through this last year, He showed me what it means to truly love. When you love a child, you don’t let them keep making the same mistakes, you teach them how to make the better choices and love them through the valleys.
God will let you keep walking around the mountain until you get it, which is why the mountain analogy is so good. You start in the valley. You learn along the way up; the summit is there, you know it, so no matter how many times around it takes, you keep going.
—
Coming this fall, I will have a Mountain Series coming on this blog, if you like this kind of writing and these kinds of analogies, give a like or comment and I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s coming!