By Allison Bucher
When I was in grade school, I remember watching a documentary about a man who was attempting to climb Mount Everest. It was a story about his heroic journey to reach the summit of the tallest mountain in the world, and spoiler alert, he did it. Sure, it was inspiring, and seeing it in IMAX made it even cooler. As a child, I struggled to grasp the significance. After all, people climb mountains all the time, right?
As an adult, I now understand what a feat it really was. Even now, it’s hard to fully comprehend just how massive Mount Everest actually is and how dangerous the journey to the summit can be. Unless I ever stand at the base of Everest myself, I may never truly understand its scale. The only mountain I’ve experienced is the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I once stood at an impressive 2,280 feet in the air. For comparison, the summit of Everest is 29,029 feet.
Still, I think it’s safe to say we all have an Everest in our life — something we’ve been trying to climb, whether for a few years or for a few decades. We imagine that once we reach the top, we’ll finally have a clearer view. And while that might be true, sometimes we have to assess the cost. Is it worth hurting ourselves just for a different perspective?
Now I see why Everest is such a monumental challenge. The entire trek takes about two months. It’s risky, exhausting, and requires years of training. It’s not just a long hike. Even knowing all of that, it’s still hard to grasp its size from a photo. It looks like a mountain, yes, but the true weight of it can’t be felt unless you’ve stood before it. Most of us never will.
But we all have an Everest. We’ve all had or will have something that feels impossibly big, overwhelmingly steep, maybe even unclimbable. And while we’re staring at what feels like the tallest summit in the world, others might just see a mountain, unable to grasp how big it really is unless they’ve stood in front of it too.
For the past decade or more, one of my biggest Everests has been anxiety. It’s a mountain I’ve been climbing for years. Some seasons the path feels manageable; other times the altitude changes without warning. It’s a summit I’ve tried to reach more times than I can count, but the climate is never predictable.
After all these years, if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this: we never really know how big someone else’s mountain is. It’s kind of like “objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” except in this case, it’s more like “objects in the photo are bigger than they appear.”
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: we don’t have to be on the mountaintop to be close to God. He meets us right where we are. In fact, some of the clearest moments I’ve had with Him weren’t at the summit but at rock bottom. Over time, I’ve come to believe that rock bottom is sacred ground, because sometimes it’s the only place solid enough to start again.
It brings to mind the words of Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Our help doesn’t come from the mountain or from reaching the summit. It doesn’t come from our own strength or pretending the journey is easy. It comes from the One who formed the mountain with His hands, the One who knows every step, every ledge, every shadowed valley and walks with us as we put one foot in front of the other.
So whatever Everest you’re facing, you’re not facing it alone. If you find yourself at the bottom again, take heart. God isn’t just waiting for you at the summit. He is with you in every step and stumble, even when it feels like you’re not moving at all.
Because no matter how big the mountain may be, God is bigger.
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