You know those days where you feel like you’re getting a head cold, you don’t have time to cut your grass, your meetings went longer than expected, on top of that you forgot a meeting, you’re behind on sending invoices, bills are due tomorrow, you never get through your emails, so much for going on that run, and you still have 5 hours until the workday is finished?
That’s me right now.
I’d let out a cleansing yell, but there’s no way I could find the energy.
So I’m waiting for Annette to get home from a movie. Before she left, she made me promise I wouldn’t watch American Idol without her. The girls are in bed, and I flip through the channels to find some background noise to help me get through some freelance work. I’ve landed on Frontline, and they’re featuring some climbers who got caught on Mt. Everest during a huge storm in 1996.
I have no clue what it’s like to be driven so hard to accomplish something so remarkable. These people seem so familiar and almost ordinary. But there’s nothing ordinary about people who can discipline themselves so and push that hard towards a goal. They knew the risks when they set their minds to attempt the climb. Several of them are missing all of their fingers.
I’ve done a few things in my life that took some serious drafts of courage. I went skydiving right after I graduated from college. That was absolutely amazing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it weren’t so dang expensive.
I went rock climbing in Oklahoma (or was it Kansas?) several years ago with some friends who knew a lot more about climbing than I did. I believe at the peak we were a little under 1000 feet off the ground. I still get a little woozy thinking about it.
Marriage isn’t quite as physically risky, but it’s definitely an intense journey that you have to commit to much like you would a climb up Everest. Annette and I have a drive to climb together for the long haul. We get jazzed about what it will be like to look back on our life together years from now seeing how God has redeemed all the difficult times that we went through together.
Parenting? I probably don’t even have to explain that. It don’t matter how you got yourself into this gig… By plan or by accident…you’re on the ride. I guess it’s more like the storm these climbers got slapped by. 29,035 feet up, in the dark, and the wind hits. You know it has to get easier at some point, but there’s no way to forecast that. You’re tripping over rocks, eyelids freezing together, and no matter what advice people yell in your ear, their voice will never be louder than the wind. Hold on to one another, and just keep heading in the general direction of base camp, if you even think you know where it might be.
The more I learn about life, the more I realize that EVERYTHING carries risk. And ANYTHING worth spending these precious days of life doing takes a lasting, enduring commitment. I am in awe of people who can pull out unspeakable strength to move THROUGH great difficulty rather than allow themselves to lay down and die in it. These climbers literally had to shout out loud to themselves, “DON’T SLEEP! Stay awake! Stay awake!” One man forced himself to try to do dance moves while laying in the cold, cyclonic wind just to keep his body producing heat.