Reaching for the heights

I hung suspended in the air, my body swaying away from the wall that I had pushed off of and now swinging back towards it once more. My arms reached out to grasp the nearest handhold as I simultaneously switched the positioning of my feet that I might be able to make it to the top. At that moment I realized how surreal I felt. I was rock climbing, something I've always waned to do, and here I was, finally doing it! My friend Stephanie has been telling me about rock climbing for months now, and last Monday our schedules worked out perfectly so we hit the road to Rochester and went to RockVentures. 

Steph had challenged me to a specific climbing route...now more than a hundred feet above the ground, I pulled myself to the last handhold. I had done it and I had never felt so strong before. It was like engaging in some incredibly insurmountable battle and coming out the victor. Looking back on it, I understood why I loved it so much. I felt independent and capable--something we tend to strive for as humans. It was enough to make one decide to be single forever. (Because obviously everyone equates singleness with independency).   

Yet it wasn't till later the next day that I was hit with a very humbling epiphany: the independence that I had so greatly savored had been granted to me because of my dependence on another. The rock climbing that we were doing is not a one person ordeal. In fact, the only way to do it is to have another person. Yes, you're allowed to do what's called traversing, but that's only going around the base of the warehouse walls and no higher than your shoulders. It's possible to rock climb by yourself, but you won't reach the heights that are available to those that choose the route of doing it together. 

Let's have a little lesson in rock climbing: there's the climber who is hooked up to a rope and harness. Yet the rope and harness aren't adequate enough till you have a belayer, or a person who stands at the bottom while you climb and secures the rope for you. No matter how scary it might seem at first, as you learn to trust that your belayer will be watching and pulling the rope taut for you in case you fall, you learn to trust the beauty of dependancy. 

Because just as the paradoxical verse in Romans claims that God's strength is perfected in our weakness, so also in order to be independent and capable, we must be dependent and weak. There was no way I would have reached the ceiling without admitting that I needed to depend on Jenelle to keep the rope taut for me. There is no possibility of being strong enough to pull myself from grip to grip without comprehending how weak I would be without someone there to help. 

When I realized this epiphany, I laughed at myself and shook my head. Here I was, thinking that I could go on and journey into the world as independent as a copper penny, and I come face to face with reality: that we can't do this alone. The group of us that had gone were rather tired out on the car ride back, yet as conversation started and grew, we found ourselves wholeheartedly agreeing that people need people. 

It's possible to go through life alone, but it's not recommended. You can traverse without making any connection further than "hello", without committing yourself to relationships that could get messy, without ever having to experience heartbreak. Or you could climb, step after step, sweating and breathing heavily, sometimes leaping, sometimes falling, but always relying on the rope and knowing that you'll reach the heights. The heights are worth it. Traversing might satisfy for awhile, but eventually mundane routines and safety gets tiring. 

Yes, I said it. Safety gets tiring. And while relationships can be harbors of safety, secure in times of storm, they can also be the very vortex of the storm. Yet which would you rather choose? The deceptive safety of trusting yourself for your sufficiency, or the humbling secureness in trusting your life to a dangerously loving Jesus, who wants you to not only participate in community, but to become community?  

The choice seems obvious, yet it's hard to make. Choosing to give yourself up to others, give yourself up to God, well, it's the battle of surrender. Yet His will is far more beautiful than yours, so embrace that, trust the rope and leap for the next handhold. You'll never know until you try.