The Climb

You know you're on shaky ground when you have a spiritual experience while listening first, to a Miley Cyrus song (The Climb) and then again later while watching a movie about climbing Mount Everest :). It's the whole idea of overcoming when things get hard. I am completely fascinated by the Beck Weathers story. An amateur climber caught in a blizzard on Mount Everest. He hooks up with some other climbers, but can't get up after they stop to rest so they leave him to die. The group sends a doctor back who decides that although he's alive, he won't make it and leaves him again. And then several hours later, Beck wakes up and walks into the camp. He is placed in a tent and left alone for a third time since they still expect him to die. He survives the night so they decide to attempt a rescue. He lives through the ordeal of walking down to Camp One despite being blind, with frostbite on both hands, his nose, and face. Other heroic people make his rescue possible by risking their own lives. Beck recovers and realizes that HOW you live when adversity hits is what matters. In those final moments before death (or so he thought), he didn't care about his profession or personal accomplishments like climbing the highest mountain on every continent - only that he survive to see his wife and kids. It's a miracle he's a live - that he survived when more experienced climbers died - that he awoke from a hypothermic coma. His story inspires me. A women in my church posted a sign in her office that says, "I can do hard things." My life isn't really that hard, but I like her motto and have adopted it for myself. I, Ella, can do hard things. I can put aside bad feelings because it's the right thing to do. I can recover when I make a mistake. I can be patient with my kids when I am tired of being patient. I can swallow my pride (this one is by far, the hardest one for me). And so that's why I was also touched by Miley Cyrus' song, "The Climb," that says: "There's always gonna be another mountain, I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle, Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I get there, Ain't about what waiting on the other side - it's the climb!" Isn't that what life's really about - the journey. Am I headed in the right direction - toward God? Yes. So it doesn't matter how fast I get there as long as I keep moving toward Him and His Son, Jesus Christ. It's the climb.