It's the Climb

Have you ever wanted to do something so much that you felt like you would simply burst if you didn't do it? Have you ever worked so hard on something that when you finally reached the top and you looked at what you had achieved that you could barely believe it? It's the climb.

I wrote my first, full-length book when I was in college. I'd written smaller things, shorter things before, but I had never actually finished a novel until my junior year. It was a huge accomplishment. Hours were spent in its writing. Tears were shed. Hearts broken. (Well, probably not that one, but I would like to think so.) I recently published this book, The Search. After seven years of just sitting on it, I finally released it to the world.

Why did it take me so?

No. Seriously. So many people encouraged me to publish it. To spread its message. To do something with the work that I had done. But, I didn't feel like I could. You see, this book was an incredibly personal story for me. I had lived some of the things that happened. I had seen my friends live some of the things that happened. A part of me didn't want to open myself up like that. A part of me didn't want the world to know my life. I wrote it to be inspirational-and I hope that it is, but I just couldn't publish it. Then I realized something that I think every person needs to realize at some point in their lives: life throws curve balls at us, it has peaks and valleys, there's always going to be something that wants to hold us back. We can't let it.

Because, if we do let our fears, our worries, the voices in our head telling us that we can't make it to the top stop us from achieving our goals, we are doomed to be flooded out when the rain comes.

It's like climbing to the top of a mountain-or walking up a super steep hill. It might be easy at the base. We're excited. Ready for the exertion. As we get higher, as we climb and use our muscles and energy, we become weaker. Sometimes we might even lose our reserve to keep going. I think this is a mistake. Do you think Norway and Hillary were able to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest in a single day?

No! It took seven...7 weeks in the cold & hard conditions. Do you think that they every thought to themselves, "gee, I can't do this. I should just stop and go home. It's so much warmer down there." (This one probably happened). I'm 100% positive that there were times that they didn't want to keep climbing. That they wanted to give up.

But they didn't.

They kept going and they were the first people to reach Mt. Everest's summit.

I think every single one of us has the ability to do what they did. Maybe not the climbing of the mountain bit, but we can do something in our lives that we have always wanted to do.

Now, I'm not saying that we'll always like the view. There have been plenty of times I've done something that I thought be great and then, when I reached the top, the view wasn't all that spectacular. However, more times than not, pushing ourselves to keep going, to just keep swimming as my friend Dory would say, reveals some of the best sights imaginable. You do things that you never thought were possible.

It is the best feeling in the world.