Up on the Mountain

I've had a lot of mountaintop experiences in my faith. Most have been connected to major events, especially in my tween and teen years. Weeks at Bible camp, weekend retreats, mission trips. They're the times you feel God show up in your life in a big way. There are numbers of Biblical references to such mountaintop experiences. Most people think of Jesus' Transfiguration, but God also met others on mountaintops - post-flood Noah and multiple visits with Moses probably being the most recognizable. Mountaintop experiences are invigorating, comforting, rejuvenating. But they're always visits, never a dwelling place. Which means that, at some point, you have to come back down.

I live in the Midwest, land of plains and forest. We don't have any real mountains here (though a very young me referred to the large piles of gravel in my hometown's gravel pits as such). But I've always had a bit of an affinity for finding a good hilltop, especially with the view of some body of water. I love to stop a moment and just take in the beauty of it. My first such favorite place was the top of a hill along my local park reserve's bike path. Every childhood bike ride through the park with my parents required a pause to enjoy the view, usually accompanied by some water and/or a snack. It was a place I loved so much that I once worked it into a story that I wrote for a school assignment. Teen me fell in love with the lakeside hilltop at the Bible Camp I attended with my best friend one summer, feeling so attached to it that I decided I needed to add such a hill to the imaginary camp I'd invented in my hometown; any time I needed to process or reflect on the hard parts of life, I'd write a story of how I'd gone up to that hill to think through things and have a conversation with one of the camp counselors there. In my 20s I discovered a new favorite hilltop, one at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum overlooking the main pond. But with a picnic shelter right there, the location is less than peaceful. As I began repeat visits to the Arboretum, I gradually found additional hilltop views, many beautiful, though most didn't provide a place to rest. On one particular solo Fall visit, I opted to play follow-the-bench. At the time the stated Arboretum rules asked visitors to stay on the pathways (they've since expanded this a bit to better verify additional free-to-wander-areas). Rule-follower that I am, I tried to obey this - but in my head I determined that if I saw a bench off the main pathway, walking to the location of said bench was fair game (otherwise why put a bench there?). It was through this exploration that I found a hilltop with a collection of benches and eventually settled on a notably comfy one with a gorgeous view.

     

Pretty hilltop view, but not so peaceful

     

Pretty hilltop view, but no bench in sight.

Nice hilltop bench, but my angle hides how noticeable the road and parking lot below are in person.

Mostly-isolated hilltop perfection (though admittedly prettier when the trees actually have leaves)

At the time of first discovery, I mostly cared about taking photos from that location. And then on a Fall Saturday after a morning of teaching music lessons, struggling deeply with how the values of the business I worked for were shifting, I decided to put my Arboretum membership to use and went to walk off the anger. Eventually this led to settling in on the hilltop bench as I mulled over how maintain my own values in working with my students and their families despite the overall business changes, pondering whether or not I should continue working there and if so how long was it worth trying to stick it out. I spent at least an hour on the bench that day, and somehow in that moment it first became my go-to spot for reflection. I often continued to return to that bench that Fall and in the Fall that followed. Taking time to enjoy the view in the midst of long days of walking, always finding a way to include it among my stops even when the rest of my day was spent prioritizing trails nowhere near it.

So this Spring when I hit a weekend of circling thoughts that were struggling to find their way out, I opted to put off visiting the church I'd planned on checking out that Sunday and headed to the Arboretum instead. I spent over two hours sitting there. There was a lot of prayer. A lot of reflection. A lot of listening. A lot of tears shed. Even a bit of writing. And it was hard to force  myself to leave in time to still grab a late lunch at the Arboretum Eatery before it closed. I wanted to stay on my mountain.

Most of the time, mountaintop experiences of faith are thought of as the best of times, the easiest of times. But my mountaintop this Spring? Mine has been filled with struggle and refinement, continual failing and repentance and trying to do better each next time. It's meant confronting a lot of things that God has graciously allowed me to ignore until He put me in the right place surrounded by the right people to trust that He'll take me through it, not unscathed but with faith that something better lies on the other side. But through the struggle? I've felt a closeness with God that I haven't felt in years, His presence constant when I remember to look for it. And He's blessed me with deepening friendships in bonds forged on the battlefield of a very challenging season at work. It's a time period that hasn't been easy, but its fruits have been plentiful and satisfying.

I returned to my hilltop a week later to reflect and pray and write once more. And all of those things happened in ways different yet still nearly as fulfilling as my previous visit. But it also came with an innate understanding that the time has come to start traveling back down the mountain. And all in all, I'm lucky, really. My mountaintop experience has lasted a full 6 weeks, so much longer than most mountaintop experiences do. But with it comes so many questions and their associated fears. While I know that God's presence will follow me back down from the mountain, what happens if I forget to continue seeking Him when life goes back to normal in the same way I've done so many times before? What happens when this period of quick growth and thirst for learning settles back to a normal pace? Will the writing that I've dived into so deeply again in an attempt to process the complexity of this mountaintop experience fizzle out once more once I've made it through? What of the work friendships that have been so essential to this period of growth and surviving the everyday? As things at work shift to yet another new normal, what do those friendships look like moving forward? (At least God has thus far been really good at sending them my way to, in their own little ways, say "Yes, we're still friends" in the moments that I start to needlessly panic, and for that I am deeply grateful). And how do I reconnect with longtime friends whose friendships have been neglected between my overtime work hours and many non-work hours spent processing the craziness of work? What do those friendships look like when I'm coming back at such a different point in my faith and feeling like such a different person than I was a mere couple of months ago?

Yet one of the greatest lessons that God has been teaching me through this time has been to trust - to trust in Him and in the people he's intentionally placed in my life. So I breathe. And I pray. Day by day. Hour by hour. Sometimes minute by minute. And I try my very human hardest to trust that the refinement begun on the mountain will continue back down in the valley of everyday life. That God the potter who has worked so hard to soften my heart to make it moldable again will continue to shape me and work through me to carry His love into the world. And I try to trust that, while we cannot live up on the mountaintops, there will be more to come in God's time and in God's way, when He knows that I need it. And in that promise, I rest easier.