On The Heights

“The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.” Habakkuk 3:19

Yesterday I had had enough. A peer where I volunteer treated me quite rudely, I barely managed to communicate what I thought was a simple idea to a small group, our college-age daughter spent the previous night in the Emergency Room and our finances are threadbare. For any other tree, those would simply be the initial cuts, not enough to bring the whole thing crashing down.

But, besides those incidents I have battled depression as long as I can remember, and started battling a continuous non-stop headache over four years ago. I wake up with a moderate to severe headache, I go to my office with one, I try to write, study and prepare with it, and go home to sit in my chair for the rest of the evening, just waiting until I can go to sleep…my only respite from pain. With those two constant annoyances, I found my reserves were very limited. No, actually, they were quite dry.

I woke yesterday with as much pain as normal, perhaps more. Actually, I’m not sure of the exact pain level. What I felt was, “I am tired of battling.” Tired of battling the pain while trying to be a good pastor. Tired of battling depression and rarely, ever, having any lasting happiness. Tired of life that threw me like a slingshot across country and away from a place I thought I could finally call home. So, I slept in till noon. Or, I should say, I stayed in till noon. Once I’m away, I rarely can actually sleep any later.

Let me switch stories for a moment. In the summer of 1973, three friends decided to backpack in Yosemite. Dave, Dale and I made our base camp at Tuolumne Meadows and were going to follow the Tuolumne River down to the “Grand Canyon” of the Tuolumne River. It would probably have been a good seven-day adventure. But, as luck would have it, a bear invaded our site the first night out, and we hightailed it back up to base camp. We decided to drive in to Reno and visit some of Dave’s cousins.

I could write a whole story about the bear incident, but that will be another time. Fast forward to 2007. In one more year, it would have been 35 years since our aborted backpacking attempt along the Tuolumne. I got the grand design in my head that maybe three guys in their 50s could still do it. I had kept in shape on the flatlands of North Dakota, walking nearly every day. I had no idea about Dave and Dale, but I was up for it. Figuring I was in the best shape of us three, I called them with plenty of time for them to train if they needed to. (I would have to train with a pack, myself, of course).

Both men were agreeable and actually excited about the idea. But, my bubble about who was in shape was busted pretty loudly. David backpacks with his daughter quite often in the beautiful region of Eastern Washington and the panhandle of Idaho. And Dale, well, he backpacks with his son every summer near Yosemite. It looked like I would be the low man on the training totem pole.

We met 2008 and I was excited about training. Come to find out, though, Dale’s son was getting married that year; we talked about putting it off until 2009. That was okay, big deal if it was the 36^th year rather than a 35 year anniversary. That is, until my headaches struck.

They began in the fall of 2008, but at that time I figured they were a temporary malady. Maybe too much stress. I figured we would get this thing solved, I would get on the training train, and off we would go. But the headaches never went away, and I never got to recreate the trip we didn’t finish.

This passage about God making my feet like the feet of a deer is actually quite daunting to me presently. Oh, I could talk about how God enables us to go on when we might quit otherwise. But, I have to be honest. I do not feel fleet of foot at all, and I am nowhere near the heights, geographically or spiritually. I cry, that’s what I do…at least when no one, or only my wife, is looking.

I have been trying to live as if Christ were living my life. I want to live out each day as if it were Christ living exactly the things I encounter. I want to respond to each situation with the mind of Christ. I want to treat each person the way Jesus would treat them. And that thought process was going pretty well, until the headaches.

I am fine with the idea that Jesus suffered for me, therefore He can sympathize and comfort me in my pain. What I’m having trouble with is this question: “How do I live the way Jesus would live in my life with a headache?” I know Jesus suffered. But His death on the cross was a choice, and it redeemed mankind. Jesus never had a four-years-and-running headache. How do I know what it means to live as Jesus would with-a-headache?

I start to the office late. I take off early. I go home and never go out. I do far less home visitation. I visit less and less with friends. None of it is because I want to be alone, although I’ve always enjoyed solitude. But, when I’m with people, I am monitoring myself the entire time, trying to not let my pain affect my responses. And that just about wears me out.

So, I believe the Sovereign Lord is my strength. Perhaps, without His strength I would be in bed half the day every day? Perhaps the heights I scale are one step higher than if He was not my strength. I really don’t know. I don’t feel like a guy with the “strength of the Sovereign Lord”. My feet certainly don’t feel as nimble as a deer’s, and my “heights” feel more like a valley that receives sunlight only a couple of hours a day.

Don’t get me wrong; I am trusting as much, or more, than I ever have. But it is not a courageous trust. It is more a trust that says, “I have nowhere else to go.” And, not wanting to compare myself to Job, because I have a millionaire’s life compared to his suffering, I say with him, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

I just am not sure how to be a pastor, how to put in my hours, when it is okay to never leave the house, and when I am just hiding for hiding’s sake. There is no pamphlet to gauge all of this. I have no way of knowing if it is ok to go home before noon and stay there. So, it is with the squeakiest faith I say, “The Sovereign Lord is still my strength.”