Testing

Last week I took a group of students on a winter retreat up in the mountains. We had a wonderful time together but the trip also gave me a glimpse into how out of shape I really am. A couple students were planning on showing up late the first night and there was no way to get them from the parking lot to the lodge. So we decided to walk down a ski run to go get them. No problem right? Just a leisurely stroll down the mountain and and casual hike back up. It was probably half a mile down to the ski lodge. I started to get worried when about a third of the way down every step started to feel like I was stepping off of the edge of a pool. There were nine of us who went down the mountain that night. It didn't take long for me to start thinking about who was strong enough to make it back. Have you ever had downhill hiking become not fun because you were thinking about each step uphill you were going to have to take? Slipping and sliding down the hill I was dreading every step knowing that we had to come back up. We reached the bottom and looked with a not so subtle amount of dread back up the hill. There was a faint glow of light way up at the top where we had to get back to. I was not happy. As we began the long climb back up the mountain I started thinking about life and what this experience was teaching me, mostly to not think about the pain in my lungs and legs. I thought that, like life, it was easy to get down a slippery slope but it is always ten times as hard to get back up. That night all eleven of us made it back to the top. We proved to ourselves that it is possible to climb back up the mountain. Life is the same way. When we are tested God wants us to reach the top. No matter how far down the mountain of life we have slid. So when life puts you in a bind and things are very hard and the top of the mountain is just a faint glimmer in the night, God wants you to succeed, He walks with you up the mountain. Who knows how many mountains are ahead? But we can always know that each one develops perseverance. One of the members of our party said to me afterward, "I will now compare all of my physical exertion against that climb, because it was the hardest climb I have ever done." The response of life is, "it was the hardest, until the next one."