Today I did my first hike…ever. I hiked Rainbow Mountain from 14,000 ft. to 16,000, and it was dang hard.
On the way up, it was cloudy (and I was focusing on breathing) so I didn’t see many colors on the mountain. When we would stop to catch our breath and get water though, I could faintly see some red mountains, but not the vibrant colors I was expecting to see at the top. Well, we were almost to the top of the mountain when it started sleeting and snowing. After we made it to the top, the colors I was planning on seeing were all covered by a thick fog. I couldn’t really see Rainbow Mountain at all, and I had hiked so hard to be able to.
So there I was, happy I persevered to the top, because I felt accomplished, but I wasn’t so happy that I persevered for the view. My expectations weren’t met, and I was pretty disappointed. So we started hiking back down. At about a fourth of the way down, it stopped snowing, and all the clouds were gone. It was gorgeous. It was like every mountain was a different color. There was bright green, teal, pink, red, and purple mountains all around us. I stood there, and took a mental picture because it was one of those views a photo just can’t capture.
Then the Lord had it dawn on me that my hike was a lot like life. We go through hard things on the way up our figurative mountains. We don’t see the beauty on the way up because we are so focused on getting to the top. Making it through, persevering, staying faithful. Then once we’re at the top, we still can’t see the beauty in our journey because all of our unmet expectations are clouding it.
We can miss out on seeing the Lord in the little things on the way to the promise land, and even when we get there, when we are focused on the wrong things. When we are focused on the hard parts of the hike up, and we are focused on what we wanted it to be like once we got there.
But when I went down the mountain, the hike was much easier. As the elevation was decreasing, I wasn’t focusing on the physically hard parts of the hike anymore. I let my mind settle, and I picked my nose up from the grindstone, so to speak. I literally wasn’t looking down at the ground anymore, just trying to make it up the mountain, though; I had picked my head up. I let my expectations go because we had already seen the top. And there, where my eyes weren’t on my expectations and what was difficult, that was where the Lord could show me something beautiful. That’s where I did get to see all the colors on the mountain. That’s where we give God the room to do something new, and see the beauty in what He’s already done.
