the summit

Last year around this time, or maybe a little more into November, I was pregnant with my third child, very pregnant. My baking business was in full gear for Thanksgiving and my feet were swollen, very swollen. During that time, I began to watch a show called Everest on the Discovery channel. One day while the kids were at grandparents so I could bake for Thanksgiving orders without the kids around, I took a break, laid on the couch and watched about five episodes of Everest. Thank you Lord for tivo/dvr! It was then I understood the addiction of renting entire seasons of shows and watching them on dvd. One after the other, without waiting for the next week to come so you could find out what happened next. Well, tonight is the season premiere of Everest:Beyond the Limit on the Discovery channel. I've got my season pass set up on the DVR so I won't miss a single episode.

My favorite climber, Mogens, is back for another try. Last year he attempted the summit without supplemental oxygen. Not only is that crazy but it's absurd because he has chronic asthma. Mogens is a professional mountaineer and that's pretty funny too because he's from Denmark. If you google earth Denmark you will see that Denmark has no mountains. Do you see why he is my favorite climber? When I found out tonight that he was back, I got excited. His daring and crazy/insane spirit inspires me. :) Last year he made it all the way to the death zone but his journey ended there after becoming extremely ill.

I'm not a climber and I have no desire to be one. In fact, I think it looks pretty miserable but to see the will of these individuals, to see their strength take them places they never imagined, inspires me to look at my own life and look to God to show me some pretty amazing things He longs to use me for. Before watching Everest, I had never heard of a Sherpa but Russell, the expedition leader, has a "Super Sherpa" and I have never seen anyone as strong as this little man. The human will is truly amazing and the strength it finds to accomplish something bigger than us, is hard to even explain. It's miraculous. We all have an Everest in life. We all have those times when God wants to use us to do the unthinkable, the unbelievable and the unimaginable. With Him and through Him, He can use us to do great things, miraculous things.

Many mountaineers go up Mt. Everest but not all summit. Some quit, some become ill due to the insane altitude, some are injured, many actually die. Only some of us will summit our mountain. I long to summit the mountains in my life. Instead of going around them over and over again or getting halfway to the top, only to be injured and have to go back down, I long to summit! There are times we walk away from some of those mountains in order to face something bigger, to summit our dreams and find our true calling in life. That's what I long to do with my life! As a wife, a mother, a friend and for myself I want to do everything I can to follow HIM and be all that He has created me to be.

What's your dream? What's your passion? What's that thing in life you find yourself feeling called to do? We all have something we were born to do and that's what we should set out to see. As Mountaineers summit Everest, I choose to Summit my dream. God knows what my dream is and now I just have to wait for Him to show me the time to begin the climb.

No dream is too high!

Ephesians 3:20 20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,