*This piece is one I wrote about a year ago to another prompt unrelated to this current series. After starting today’s prompt over several times and tossing drafts aside (can’t win them all), I decided to pull this out of the vault and share it without editing. I want to offer a special thank you to my real life writing group I meet with once a month. I first wrote this piece at their prompting, and first shared it with them in person. Each one of them has brought me encouragement and support this past year as I’ve struggled to both recover some traction with writing and also to share my writing with others. Thanks for cheering me on, friends. Writing life is certainly better in community. ~ Emily
Climbing is a topic that makes me want to cry. I mean, if I were stronger, and more able to show myself capable of climbing with any amount of skill, it might be a different story. It hurts somewhere in the center of me to acknowledge I just don’t have the strength in my arms to do even one pull-up, let alone pull myself to greater heights, one small reach at a time.
Not that I haven’t tried. Oh, have I tried. I have labored and flexed and pressed my fingers into tiny cracks and curled them over thin ledges, pulling with all my might to attempt upward progress, and instead of progress, I’ve hit what one might call my limitations.
If I’m honest, it has been torture. Everyone has limits. I get that. But when your limits arrive on the scene much, much sooner than you anticipated or desired…well…it’s not as easy to accept them with a smile. When your limits are the type that make it impossible to present yourself to others in a joyful, put-together manner, without tears pouring out of your eyes and snot threatening to find a way out of your nostrils in a room full of strangers, let’s just say, I do what I can to stay out of situations where this might happen.
The truth is, I don’t have what it takes to climb. Of course, I’m not talking about actual, physical climbing, which I also would not do well at. I’m talking about life. I am talking about the sum total of my very serious, very intentional efforts to overcome the hard things I’ve experienced.
There’s not just one story to tell—there are many. But the overwhelming theme running through all of them has been: Emily, you can’t do this on your own.
The long-time church-going girl in me says, in perfect Christian-ese, “Of course you cannot do it on your own! You need Jesus!”
To which I say, yes, I need Jesus, and I have needed Him every day of my life.
But also? It is one thing to say I need Jesus and another thing to recognize just how great that need really, truly is.
I need Him for every breath. Literally every breath.
I need Jesus in a way that actually holds me together each day. When I have tried to climb out of depression, to move forward from the disasters behind me, to move on from the losses I have suffered, I have found myself unable to do so without drawing heavily on His grace to keep going.
It has been humbling, in the most horrible way. I don’t know why, really, but as a younger woman, I somehow imagined humility to be a little more nice and tidy than what I’ve discovered it to be. It is rather unruly, and uncomfortable in ways that are hard to put into words, but maybe you know what I’m talking about? I know the valley-place so well, the one where there is mud all around, and I’m sinking in it, and instead of eloquent, pious prayers, I’m squeaking out something more wretched and desperate than I knew could come out of me.
Help, God. Help. Help.
As tears and rain pour with ferocity, sometimes it has been the only word I can say.
Which is quite possibly why I barely know how to describe or accept or tell of what happens when you give up on climbing and instead yield to Him.
Ok God. Here I am. Messy, broken, disappointed, hurt, lost, confused.
And He cries with me. And pulls me close. And lifts me out of despair. He saves my actual life, when I’m in the hospital with a life-threatening blood clot in my lung and a baby in my womb and six more children and a husband waiting for me at home in my too-small Seattle house.
He pays my actual debts, when the sum is greater than I thought I would ever be able to repay in my lifetime, when my husband’s company is unexpectedly acquired by a larger company and the payout covers every penny we owe.
He provides an actual home, on land, that belongs to us now, something that brings us more stability than my husband or I have ever known our entire lives, both as children of divorce, and married persons of poverty-level income for our first 15 years together.
And He shows me in these, and so many more ways, that He means what He says in His Word. Like, actually means what He says. They are not empty, religious words, meant to soothe, but not sustain.
“He has lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.” Ps. 40:2, NLT
So maybe climbing isn’t the point. And seeking Jesus is.
All I know is, climbing got me nowhere, and seeking Jesus…well…I can tell you all I have lost, I count as gain, and it is better to be lifted to safety by the hands of a savior, than to try and climb your way there.
To find other writers who are participating in the Goodness, Grounded write-along, visit Locusts and Honey, read her daily posts, and surf the comment sections below for links to others. Thanks for hosting Lori!
Hard testimony, yet so powerful. It is so amazing to read these words a year later, Emily. I hear them differently after my 12+ months of slowly daring to reach for God’s handhold…and hand to hold. We’ve all grown this year. I’m so thankful for that evidence of God’s work and for your words spoken and written. They’ve changed me. 💛