Thru-Hiking

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings

I’m a section-hiker on the Appalachian Trail.  Now, if we were to meet on the trail, most likely I wouldn’t introduce myself as Kevin, but rather as Father Time.  You see, on the AT you are given a trail name, and while some name themselves, it’s always best that someone else christens you.  Mine is a little play on words.  It’s one part a joke that I am a pastor, and one part a commentary on my fancy GPS watch and that I’m the keeper of the facts such as the time we’ve been hiking, distance, general speed, etc. etc.  Others are content just starting off, enjoying the walk and arriving when they arrive.  Father Time is a little more tightly wound (pun intended).

I told you I was a section-hiker.  There are basically two types of hikers who are committed to the AT; the section-hikers and the thru-hikers.  The thru-hikers are the hard-core guys and gals who start at either the Georgia point in the spring or the Maine start a few months later.  Their goal is to do the trail from beginning to end.  Pretty hard core.

Now, us section-hikers just can’t make that kind of commitment.  Instead, we make a different kind.  Every year we scrape ourselves out of our cushy suburban life, strap a 40 lb. pack on our backs, and pick up where we left off the previous year.  Now, yes, we are a lot slower than the trail-hardened thru-hikers, but like them, we will be taking every challenging, grueling step of the AT.  It will just take us 20 years longer.

And yes, it’s humbling while we struggle up yet another mountain, that a tough, lean, thru-hiker will blow past us like we’re standing still.  Ok, but it’s not a race, right?  It’s not a contest and I’m not comparing myself to them.  I’ve got my own mountain to climb.  Besides, it’s like my friend Jason points out… to us, this trail is not just a season in our lives.  It will be part of our lives for the remainder of it.  That’s a beautiful thing.

But for some, it IS a race.  The AT is 2175 miles long and stretches from Georgia to Maine.  The fastest verified time to complete the trail was done by Jennifer Pharr-Davis with the record of 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes.  To do that kind of time, she had to book it every day all day.  It’s quite amazing.

…but it’s not us.  We want to enjoy the view.  Jennifer couldn’t take the time to enjoy a side trail that lead to a beautiful view.  That’s something we love.    Sometimes….

This last trip, probably the most challenge part of the trail was going through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We noticed that a number of the Presidential peaks were not on the main AT trail.  To reach the final tip top, you had to actually deviate from the trail, and then climb the remaining height.   From there, some of them allowed you to take another side trail and rejoin the official Appalachian trial further down the path.  This posed quite a challenge to us.  We were already hiking one of the hardest climbs as it was.

“Do we deviate to climb those peaks?”  If not, we will have to live with the fact that our exploration of the area peaks was incomplete.

“If we do, do we take the short cut side trail to meet the AT further down?” It would be much easier, but we will always know that there was quite a gap in our AT hike.

“Do we lie down in exhaustion and let the birds pick our flesh clean?”  Don’t let me lie to you and tell you I didn’t feel like that at times!

I looked at my two traveling companions and I said this…

“Gentlemen, sure, we can do things the easy way.  Sure we can lie about walking every step of this beloved trail.  Or yes, we can ignore these fabulous peaks and just be content with the wonderful accomplishments already being achieved.  Who would know?   Who would care?  I’ll tell you who!  WE WOULD!  WE would know!  I know we’re tired and weary, but there are some things that we just need to do because it’s in our souls to do.  So let’s do it.  Let’s climb these peaks because we can.  Then let’s retrace our steps back to this point and continue, un-broken down this trail.  Let us find the grace to take EVERY… SINGLE …. STEP!   WHO’S WITH ME??!!!!??”

It was beautiful.  It was a majestic speech.  And it would have been a perfect moment if they hadn’t reminded me that they had already made the decision to do so 20 minutes ago, and the only reason I was coming with them was because I didn’t want to go the easy way alone…  which I think was rather rude and didn’t need to be pointed out.

Oh well.

But we did it.  In fact we did the part of the trail that I had been worrying about for years.  It took preparation.  It took a constant working up to that point.  It was something that I don’t think I could have done on my first year on the trail, but step by step and trip by trip I was getting better.  All the preparation and planning and grunt work had paid off.

I was thinking about it last Sunday as the pastor from the church I was in said this,

“I will do today what I can do so that I can do tomorrow what I can’t do today.”

Such is our Christian walk.  I have spent so much time lately worrying about, and fearing, being unprepared for what God has for me.  Worse, I’ve been stressing out about being unqualified!  There’s a reason for this.

It’s because I am unprepared for what God has for me.

It’s because I am unqualified!

As we hiked up Mt. Washington this last trip I made a horrible decision.  I decided to read excerpts from the book “Not Without Peril” by Nicholas Howe.  Now this book goes into very interesting details about many of the hundreds (yes, I just said hundreds) of people that died while climbing Mt. Washington.

Let me repeat this to be clear.  WHILE I was in the process of climbing Mt. Washington, I decided to read a book about people that DIED while climbing Mr. Washington.  Suffice to say, THIS is not something I greatly recommend!

It freaked me out a tad!

The story that stood out the most was about poor Lizze Bourne.  Getting a late 2 pm start, back on Sept. 14th of 1885, Lizzie, her cousin Lucy, and uncle George, set out from the Glen House at the base of the mountain for the Tip Top house at the peak.  They made pretty good time for the first half, following up the carriage trail towards the peak.  But true to form with this mountain, having some of the most harsh, unpredictable weather in the world, things started to get ugly.   The wind became violent and the temperature dropped.   The party simply wasn’t dressed for this kind of weather.  They became disoriented and lost in the storm.  As it got dark, they began to realize that they could no longer tell where they were and where they should go.  They tried to find shelter behind some rocks, but that wasn’t enough.  Late that night, Lizzie succumbed to the elements and died of exposure.

The next morning the storm had passed and the sun came up in the brilliance of the new day.  It was then that uncle George and Lucy saw the horrific truth of their situation.  There, only a few hundreds yards away from them and from the lifeless body of Lizzie Bourne, stood the summit Tip Top house, whose few residence slept in comfort and warmth.

Yah.  That’s pretty much when I decided to stop reading the book for awhile.

But stories like that effect me even while off of the trail.  Is that the type of tragedy that will await me as I try to follow Christ?  I know what He’s called me to, but I also know my great ability to mess things up.  I know He loves me.  I know He’s called me.  I just am not sure why.  I see all the amazing men and women of God doing such great things, and here I am, trying to get a job and getting hit with disappointment after disappointment.

“God, I’ve let you down so much.  I understand if you just want to give up on me.”

Lloyd Ogilvie, in his book “Ask Him Anything” talks about why Peter’s denial of Jesus hit so hard.  It wasn’t the fact that he proved to be weak, but rather that he claimed to be so strong beforehand.  He claimed that no matter what, he was going to be Jesus’ stand up guy!

“The fallacy of Peter’s mind was this:  He believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he though had earned him the Lord’s approval.

“Many of us face the same problem.  We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance. Our whole understanding of Him is based on a quid pro quo of bartered loved.  He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent.  But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that He will love us, rather than living because He has already loved us.”

-Lloyd Ogilvie, “Ask Him Anything”

This is the God we serve.  And this is the challenge we face.  He gives us, not the grace to run the whole race in our own power and skills and charisma, but rather the grace to face our own great shortcomings, and realization of our own un-qualification.  And there, when we know we just don’t have what it takes, He shows us that it’s not about how WE’VE earned His love, but about how His love had made us qualified.

Paul talks about this with his mysterious thorn in the side,

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

-2 Corinthians 12:8-9

The calling of God on the lives of a Christian is not based on God finding you and saying, “Dude, you’re awesome.  Let me pile on blessings.”  I KNOW that, but I look at people who are awesome in my eyes, starting new jobs at new ministries and doing amazing things, and then I look at me,

waiting….

waiting…

waiting….

wondering if God finally had enough of me and left me out in the cold to succumb to the elements.   Maybe I made one too many screw-ups and just ain’t worth it anymore.

And then I remember the great thru-hike of life.  I’ve been coming at it all wrong.  I’ve been comparing myself to people I really don’t know anything about.  This isn’t THEIR mountain to climb, this is MY mountain.  Who cares what their time was.  Good for them.  But what they do isn’t what my life is about.   My life is me going to God and saying, “Ok, it’s a long hike.  It’s a path that I simply cannot do.  I’m just simply unqualified.  I know it.  They know it.  YOU know it.  And now that that is out of the way… what’s my next step?

“Let’s climb this mountain, Lord.”

I sat with my two friends at the top of Mt. Lafayette a number of years ago.  I thought the climb up was going to kill me.  I thought it was never going to end, until I took those last few steps to the peak.  There were no roads up there.  The only way up was to climb. The view was breathtaking.  The clouds floated all around us and we could see for days.  The only people up there were ones that climbed the mountain step… by step… by step.  Sure, many of them had a much easier time than I did, but all of us were here in this same place, digging on this same amazing view.

We sat to eat lunch.  The wind was loud and whistling all around us.  We snuggled in our sweaters in a cleft of the rock to cut the chill.  That’s when we heard a soft, melodious sound dancing around the wind.  It was singing.  We looked over the edge, to a landing on the side of the peak.  There were a group of nuns, a priest and members of their congregation who had made the climb.   They were singing their liturgy in the most beautiful harmony I’ve heard.  I kid you not.  Nuns singing on a mountain-top!   We sat back to eat the most delicious food we’ve ever had, listening to the sound of the angels as we looked off into the bright, beautiful horizon.  Every bit of the hard-fought journey was forgotten for that moment.

I didn’t worry about how unqualified I was.

I didn’t stress about the hundreds of miles left in front of me.

I didn’t freak out about the steep climb down I had yet to make.

Father Time simply sat there and enjoyed a little slice of heaven.