When Even a Foothold Is Impossible To Find
Have you ever tried to climb a mountain before?
It can be a little overwhelming. When you stand at the bottom and look up all you can see are the steep cliffs and crevices and the many vertical miles to go. Even a foothold seems almost impossible to find.
Nine months ago, our youngest daughter, Whitney, was in the middle of a middle-school basketball game when she noticed the scoreboard was blurry. When she mentioned it to me, I told her not to worry. I told her to blink a few times and rest her eye and by tomorrow everything would be better.
But it wasn’t.
The next day her vision got blurrier and blurrier as darkness started closing in around the corner of her eye. Worried, I immediately scheduled an appointment with an ophthalmologist who diagnosed her with a detached retina.
What? A detached retina? This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared for this to happen. Overwhelmed, I sat in the doctor’s office with tears rolling down my face and looked up at the mountain we were about to climb.
Whitney was scheduled for emergency eye surgery to repair the retina. She was so brave. She didn’t flinch. She grabbed my hand and held on tightly and stared up at me with big blue eyes so full of courage and determination. As they wheeled her into the operating room, I stood and watched the doors close behind her hospital cart with a heavy heart that was grasping for understanding.
She healed quickly after the surgery and we were hopeful. Her sight returned and the blurriness faded and her smile was back bigger than ever. And then? Six weeks after the surgery, we went in for a follow-up visit and discovered that we needed to have another operation. And still another surgery after that four weeks later.
It was heartbreaking.
The journey ahead looked so high and so steep and so unclimbable.
Facing a mountain is never easy. It’s hard. It’s painful and sorrowful and gut-wrenching and full of days spent searching for answers.
Proverbs 3: 5-6 says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.”
Trust him with every step. Every minute. Every hour. Every day.
Sometimes his ways are not our own. Sometimes the answer isn’t what you want to hear. Sometimes the answer is tough and hard and overwhelming.
But here’s the testimony.
Here is the truth found in God’s word.
Psalms 95:4 tells us that God holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest of mountains. We can rest in his promises. We can trust him with the road ahead. When the storm clouds gather and our mountain looks unclimbable, we can know with certainty that He has prepared a way and readied each and every foothold for us.
Because our God is on the throne.
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- When Even a Foothold Is Impossible To Find - August 24, 2017
