We live in a tiny village community called Shëngjergj (Saint George) on the mountains outside the Albanian capital city of Tiranë. The community consist of several different “neighborhoods” all scattered around the same valley. In total, there are around two thousand people calling these mountains— literal mountains, y’all—home.
The six of us live with out beautiful host family, Elvis and Beta plus their three young children, in a cozy two bedroom home. Elvis and Beta live on one side of the valley and do ministry on the other. As such, we make a two mile, forty five minute walk winding first down and then up, up, up the other side of the valley to the ministry location nearly every day.
Admittedly, most of the walk occurs on a paved road, crisscrossing the foothills with switchbacks. However, we do occasionally go off trail and follow narrow rocky herding tracks to cut our time down. This hike, while not the most difficult, is a challenge even on my best days.
Once, while heading out to ministry for the day, Bliz and I found ourselves hiking at the same pace. We finished the short walk down the valley and began the ascent. Randomly, Bliz started praying for our squadmate, Brooke, who has, for months, felt pain in her ear that the doctors cannot explain.
“Lord, we pray healing for Brooke’s ear right now, in Jesus name!” Bliz shouts, and then continues praying for our sister.
At first I was a little like, okay this is out of left field, and then I realized that we have a whole forty five minutes, really a whole hour and a half if you count the time there and the time back, to pray for all our squadmates. So after Bliz prays for Brooke, I jump in, “Lord, we thank you for Michaela and the calling you’ve placed on her life! We thank you that…”
And we go like this back and forth, team by team, praying for our sweet squadmates. We call out their strengths and speak life into their dreams. We chase away darkness and fears, and celebrate how far The Lord has already carried them.
As we get closer to the top of the valley, the hike grows harder, and praying out loud feels impossible between gasps for breath. But my heart, so overwhelmed with love and remembrance of all these beautiful people who I’ve traveled with for ten months, demands I push through. So I keep praying sometimes only two or three words coming out at a time, giving all that I have in telling The Lord about some of my favorite humans.
It was the first time in my life the difficult spiritual act of prayer mirrored the difficult physical act of climbing mountains. When we intercede for one another, we’re climbing mountains. Gosh that was a beautiful little lesson.
We finished praying for exactly half the squad by the time we reached our ministry location. Our team congregated in the shade of a building to catch our breath and drink water. As we stand, my heart is still so vastly overwhelmed with love for these people.
And then, like always seems to happen to spoil a beautiful moment of teaching, growth, and love, a lie got whispered into my heart, “you’re going to have to say goodbye to them soon, and how many do you think will actually talk to you when it’s all over? How many of them will really want to be your friend when they aren’t forced to live with you? You know that you love them WAY more than they love you and that it’s going to hurt so bad when it ends, right?”
I’ve gotten a whole, whole lot better at shushing the lies these last ten months but something about this lie made me stop and listen.
Now I find myself overwhelmed in two parts; one part with love for the amazing people I know and one part with crippling insecurity. And soon I’m spiraling.
I’m not like the rest of the squad. I’m not as cool or as brave or as talented as them. My calling isn’t as big. My dreams are dreams that I will never be able to achieve while I see some of them already taking big steps into fantastic futures. Who am I to even think any of them would want to still stand with me when this whole thing is over?
As I’m spiraling and trying to catch my breath, Walker says something to me, I really couldn’t tell you what it was, but the comment was enough to get me to try and focus on getting out of my head and talk to him, and suddenly I’m talking too much, and I’m rambling, and I know I’m acting weird, oh gosh why am I acting so weird, and see this is exactly why nobody is going to want to actually be my friend when they aren’t forced to–
“Hey are you okay?” He asks, his voice caring but also serious in a “dude, calm down” kind of a way.
I breathe.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah. I can tell.”
“I’m just… tired. The hike, you know?”
Try again, Kay. You’ve learned more than to answer like that.
“I’m… overwhelmed. Bliz and I were praying for the squad on the walk up here and it overwhelmed me.”
A half-truth. Okay, I guess. A step towards light.
But I can’t say I’m insecure. I cannot lay those cards on the table, to him or the team, because once I admit I’m insecure, it’ll seem like I want something from them, which’ll mean they think I’m needy, which means they won’t want to spend time with me, which proves my fears are correct. Oh, here’s that spiral again.
So I don’t say much, and I go through the day, praying with Bliz again on the hike down, trying to pour all my energy into nothing but prayer and love, and I fall asleep that night an anxious mess.
I wake up the next morning and I go outside to look at the mountain in the early morning light. Instead of doing a “big studying, intercessionary, seeking the will of God” quiet time I decided to look at the mountain and go, hour by hour, through the day before and tell Jesus about it.
In the depths of my heart I meet the Creator of the Universe and we chat.
We get to the insecurity and I’m trying to explain the feeling to Him. And he tells me something beautiful.
“Take a rock in you hand. That right there is your insecurity, your worries, your shortcomings, your failures. Most days, they’re all you let yourself see. Warrior, you ask me about perspective all the time and I ask you, what aren’t you seeing?”
I stare at this rock and I’m not seeing what I’m not seeing… until I do. I shift my eyes, my perspective, and behind this rock, I see a mountain.
“I am this mountain. I am larger, vaster, and more beautiful than the things you want to focus your attentions on. I call you higher. I create you. Why look at this rock, these things which weigh you down, these things which are lies, when you can look at Me?”
And I, shifting my feet through the familiar dance the Lord and I seem to keep finding ourselves in, am humbled.
I know the Race will end, and things will change. I know I might not be as close to some people a year from now as I am today. But I also know the pain of loving now far outweighs the hurt of goodbye later.
I know…and still, I trust. I trust. I trust. I just, forget sometimes how infinitely big my God is and how small my momentary troubles are in light of Him and all He has promised me. In these last weeks—gosh, all I have left of this journey are weeks at this point— I want to hold my relationships, my life, my everything, in open palms, focusing not on them, but on the bigger goal and picture before me—my God.
