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I can do hard things – I’m in a transition season. I finished squad leading and have been stuck in the in between wondering what it looks like to continue chasing dreams and what the intermediate steps look like. It’s super easy to get overwhelmed when you look too far ahead and forget that it’s not about jumping up 3500m in one go, but it’s about putting one step in front of the other and using wisdom along the way.
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Jesus is more for the journey than the destination – EBC is funny in the way that even though EBC is your goal, once you get there, you still have just as much journey to get back down. If life was only about getting to our destinations we’d be stuck up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere sucking air without a ton of oxygen and freezing toes off.
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All the Lord wants is space – Each day I would ask the Lord for a word to meditate on. Along the way there were Buddhist mantras carved into large rocks or stone tablets. Something that Christians can learn from Buddhists is the art of meditation and slowing down. Every time we’d pass one of these or I’d catch my mind wandering I’d come back to the word the Lord gave me for the day. My words varied from empathy, peace, embrace, rest to magnificence, courage, to praying, “Lord you can do whatever you want with me life, however you want to do it”. It’s crazy to look back and see the journey the Lord took me on just through some simple words.
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Community is necessary – Starting day one when my knees began to hurt, asking for prayer probably changed the trajectory of my trek. Hearing Taylor White pray against fear–which was something that I wasn’t even aware that I had–to seeing team form around each person in their weakness was humbling. I’m incredibly thankful the Lord has designed us to do life in community.
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The Lord has better plans than we do – I’m so incredibly happy that some of my best friends got to journey with me. There were so many times that I was overwhelmed with thankfulness that I didn’t have to do it alone. Leading up to the trip, I didn’t have much planned and felt peace that it was going to work out. I just never would have guess that it would have worked out in the way that it did. I’m sure that I would have learned some different lessons had I done it alone, but team Everest will forever hold a special part in my heart because of our shared experience.
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Entitlement destroys everything – When you’re trekking each step is a gift. When you’re in the middle of nowhere, warmth is looked at as a special highlight. When there’s no cell service the people you’re around are YOUR PEOPLE. Man, it was incredible the amount of thankfulness and joy that I experienced. Warm drinks felt more special than they ever have, prayers from friends became necessary and I felt more connected to the Lord and the people I was around more than I was connected to social media or people across the world.
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The Lord is faithful, all the time – There were at least three times where I heard his voice promise me something that I didn’t see as possible in my human perspective. I had a choice, I could either believe that still small voice, or I could shut it out and rely on my own strength. Spoiler alert, it’s always better to listen to his voice. If your situation isn’t good, then it’s not the end. I think a lot of times people lose hope in the Lord because they quit right before the blessing. And hear me out, I only know this because I’ve done it so many times. EBC reminded me of this because I had no other option. Either I could believe that when he said I would make it up and down the mountain without having to quit that I would, or I could have quit day one when my knees started hurting. Either I could have trusted that when the Lord said that the Chinese man with severe AMS HAPE and HACE (Acute mountain sickness can progress to high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) or high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), both of which are potentially fatal, and can only be cured by immediate descent to lower altitude or oxygen administration.) would live or I could have used my human eyes and surrendered to the hopeless medical perspective that he couldn’t breathe and was unconscious (to read more about this click here – spoiler alert, after being found three days after he had started to show symptoms we got him a helicopter and he’s alive and well!).
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You don’t need set up “ministry” to do ministry – five world racers choose to pay a significant chunk of change, leave their scheduled ministry for the month and embark on a crazy journey partly because it’s an incredible opportunity; but, moreso because I have to believe that we need to live our life as ministry–not just when we’re working with a ministry. We met countless people along the way and got to share about the World Race and therefore Jesus. We got to pray for people that were on a journey not just to EBC but to figure out meaning in life. And, like mentioned earlier, we got to pray for a man that should have died.
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Sometimes the hard things are the best things for you – If you haven’t read my itinerary blog yet (here!) then, let me tell you about acclimatization/rest days. The jist of these days is that you hike up really high and then hike back down to where you started and sleep where you slept the night prior (hike high, sleep low). This allows your body to adjust to the altitude (which the Chinese guy didn’t do). To be frank, they’re not very fun and can seem like pointless hiking. But let me tell you, the days after acclimatization days I felt like a million bucks.
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God , Jesus, and Holy Spirit are both magnificent, faithful, just, and mysterious at the same time – I referenced it earlier, but one day I prayed the same prayer over and over. “God you can do whatever you want with my life, however you want to do it.” To be frank, I wouldn’t recommend praying this prayer unless you’ve taken some time to actually think through it. It’s bold, it’s humbling, and you’re agreeing to give everything up without a promise of anything but the fullness of the Lord in return. But let me tell you, I’d rather have a life full of Everest treks that are hard and questionable than get to heaven one day and look back on all the “could have beens”. AND before you start disqualifying yourselves, it doesn’t matter how old you are, how much “bad” you’ve done, or how daunting the prayer seems–I promise that it’s worth it and I promise you that God wants to use you.
Thanks for being a part of my journey. Stay tuned for what’s next!
