Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Look to the Mountains

About ten years ago Brad and I went camping in the back country of Glacier National Park in Montana. We hiked about 11 miles in to the campsite, where Brad erected the tent on a lovely plateau. Far below us a glacial lake sparkled the blue-green shade of Aquafresh, and above us, enveloping us, the mountains loomed. It was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen. Over our dinner of macaroni and cheese and a Hershey’s Special bar we watched the mountains glow azalea pink as the sun set, and then we tucked into our flannel and fleece for the night.

Two hours later, about midnight or so, I awakened with a jolt. The wind had picked up, and the nylon tent flapped violently as gusts shuddered across the plateau. I panicked. Suddenly I was sweating, dizzy, nauseous.

“Brad! Brad! I feel gross! I think I’m going to throw-up!"

I shook him awake – of course he was sleeping peacefully through it all. “Are we okay?! The tent! The tent! It’s blowing over! I think I’m going to throw up!”

Brad assured me that we were indeed okay, something about the tent material and its tendency to flap loudly in the even the most innocuous breeze.

I decided I needed some fresh air to quell the nausea, so I crawled out onto the rock in my socks and stood up. But gazing up at those looming mountains, the glacial snow ripping dramatic, ghostly swaths of white across the darkness, was even worse, even more terrifying. A baffling mix of agoraphobia and claustrophobia swept through me as I stood on the rock shivering in my flannel pjs, my arms wrapped around my chest. The land was so monstrously vast that I felt squashed, like the mountains were an enormous vice squeezing the breath from my body. Suddenly the reality that I was trapped – stuck in this big, lonely, scary place, eleven miles on foot from civilization in moonless, bear-ridden blackness – horrified me.

I ducked back into the tent. “It’s not helping!” I gasped to Brad. “I feel weird! I want to leave! Can we leave now?”

Brad stared at me in disbelief. “Now? Are you kidding? How do you think we’re going to find our way back to the lodge in the middle of the night?”

I realized, of course, that he was right; leaving was impossible. I felt gaggy. I started to cry.

The rest of the night I dozed with my face pressed into a tiny opening in the zipped tent flap, trying to negotiate a balance somewhere between in and out of the tent. Brad was sweet and remarkably patient, especially given the fact that no one in his entire extended family would have ever acted like such a wackjob on a camping trip. At 5 a.m. we packed up our campsite and began the eleven-mile hike back out. The next night we spent in a lodge. All in all, it was not my best moment.

I was reminded of that camping disaster yesterday when I heard these verses from Psalm 121:

“I look up to the mountains; does my strength come from the mountains? No, my strength comes from God, who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.” (1-2, The Message)

I didn’t believe in God at the time I spent that terrified night in the backcountry of Glacier National Park. I wonder now, if I had, would I have perhaps experienced awe rather than simply fear? Or at least awe mixed with fear? I wonder if I would have looked at those massive, looming peaks and felt amazed at God’s power, his awesomeness and might, instead of feeling overwhelmed by my insignificance, smallness and mortality.

Unfortunately, fear alone prevailed that night in the Montana mountains; it took another decade or so for the beginnings of awe and wisdom to follow. But today, nearly 15 years later, as I read those verses from Psalm 121, I’m grateful that I do believe in a God that big, that awesome, that astoundingly and beautifully overwhelming. Sure, I still feel small in the face of such grandeur, in the face of God and the landscape he created, but I don’t feel nearly as insignificant. Because now I know that the God who created the majestic Rocky Mountains also created me.

When's the last time you were simply awed by God? And what prompted that reaction?

{photo from the Grand Tetons, 2012; and if this story sounds vaguely familiar, it's because I've written about it before...way back in 2010 when I first started blogging!}  

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