The Mountain in My Backyard

A wheatfield with a backdrop of Mt. Rainier
Photo by Bgrace

I’m sitting on my deck in my pajamas with a giant cup of coffee, the last corner of blueberry buckle, the morning sun streaming down on my shoulder and a cool breeze blowing across my face. Sam is walking Dad and Mom is watching TV with the girls. All of that may prove helpful, but I have to credit Jean with giving me the phrase I needed to write this post. This is, after all, my third attempt. The first was last week in WA. But I felt too drained to put my thoughts and feelings into a readable form. The second attempt was on the 28 hour trip home in the middle of the plane. Middle row, middle seat… Matt on my right sleeping like a baby; the guy on my left in dire need of a shower and some deodorant. I came up with about 30 “first” sentences. Didn’t like any of them. Amazing Jean watched the girls all week, took care of Sam, and got my house ready for my parents. (Yes, I am spoiled.) Anyways, she was talking about how challenging it was and she said, “It’s harder than you’d think! Now I know what it’s like for you. I needed a Jean!” We laughed about it, but it is so true. You can be around someone and see the ins and outs of their life, but when you actually walk in their shoes and shoulder their responsibilities, you realize there was a lot you didn’t realize. The closer we get to sharing someone else’s experiences, the better our ability to comprehend their journey, and the difficulty of it…and the more compassion we have. Ted and I were talking about the “unfairness” of my journey…and the overwhelming pressure I feel from “people” and their expectations of me through this process.

Ted and Nancy have a beautiful backyard…it backs up on land protected for wildlife and is quiet and serene. And there’s this mound that Ted has been working on for the last couple years…a little hill of flowers in their backyard. Matt and I spent some time weeding and spreading mushroom compost on it for them. Perhaps that’s why my mind grabbed on to the metaphor. It’s like I was telling Ted…I feel like everyone around me has this hill in their backyard—a little mound with flowers on top. And they climb their little hill and come back down. And some of them are young and energetic and it’s no big deal at all. And some of them are old and have weak knees and it’s hard, but they deal with the difficulty and climb their hill every once in a while and feel good about the effort. I feel like they hear about the difficulty I’m having about climbing the hill in my backyard, and in their mind’s eye, they see their own hill. Because they’ve never seen anything like the hill in my backyard. They don’t realize the hill in my backyard is Mt. Rainier. (Nancy told me about 5 people die every year trying to climb it.) So these people, who have never tried to climb ANYTHING even remotely similar to Mt. Rainier are looking at me and saying, “What in the world is her problem? What is wrong with her that this is such a struggle? Shouldn’t she know how to climb the hill in her backyard? Isn’t it obvious that you just put one foot in front of the other and go? Can’t she just follow the pathway? Why isn’t she just staying on the trail?” And I’m going…you don’t understand. This is not the hill in your backyard, this is something VERY different. In fact, there is no trail. And storms can come out of nowhere and turn a moderately safe climb into a suicidal attempt. In some places, you can evaluate your next step with every possible caution, and through no fault of your own, end up making a horrible misstep. I watched a movie once where these people were climbing a mountain and they went to walk on what they thought was perfectly solid snow covered ground and it was actually just an accumulation of snow with nothing underneath it but air…and even though they were very good climbers, checked every information that was available to them, and took every precaution they still fell to their death. So, in my metaphorical world, I am trying to tell people about the climb in this movie and suddenly I realize they’ve never even seen snow on their hill, much less a snow covered mountain. They have no idea what I’m trying to explain and they are making all sorts of judgments about my abilities to climb hills, follow paths, my ability to evaluate difficulty or handle stress. They’re saying, “Just put one foot in front of the other, Becky, stick to the path and you’ll make it up and down the mound and you’ll be just fine. It’s so frustrating because the more I try to explain the more unreasonable I come across because they can’t actually understand the scale of difference between what I’m describing and what is in their backyard. So my point here is not that I think those people should feel sorry for me. Obviously a little compassion would be nice. But that’s THEIR problem, not MY problem. My problem is that I care way too much about what those people think of me and how they define my journey. And I’ve allowed their opinions of me and my journey to cause me enormous amounts of distress…even though I know full well they have no idea what I’m going through. And I know full well they probably wouldn’t have survived this long. I see myself through their eyes all the time and I feel the weight of their condemnation and condescension and the force of their conclusions and I carry the burden slung around my heart…which comes very close to stopping under the pressure. Somehow I wish I could say in a way they could really get it...“this is harder than you’d think.” I can’t walk this for everyone or anyone else anymore. As Ted so wisely said, “It’s enough in one lifetime to have to deal with ourselves.” I have to let go of other’s expectations. And I’m trying to let go of so many of the expectations I have of myself. Because the truth is, I expect myself to be as good at climbing Mt. Rainier as everyone else is at climbing their flowery mound. I think I shouldn't be breathing any harder than they are at the end of our separate climbs. And not only do I allow everyone else to punish me, but I punish myself. Ted’s told me I need to start being kind to myself. I know he's right. I’ve been thinking about you all as I write this--and I’d like to pass that on…be kind to yourself. Each of you has an Everest or McKinly in your backyard. The fact that you have your own mountain has given you the capacity to be compassionate with mine. Most people have no idea the hell we go through. But God does. That's been a real point of dissonance for me. I KNOW He knows. And so I know He understands how difficult the climb is. But I also know He could CHANGE it if He wanted to...or at least make it easier. Maybe He’s not so much standing at the top looking down with expectation as He is a companion along the way. It’s hard for me to let Him be that. I’d rather Him move my mountain. He made the damn thing, didn’t He? Perhaps it’s more important for Him to move me.