Faith That Holds Under Weight

By the time I found myself praying on the descent from Everest, I'd been climbing for 33 hours straight. I was alone in the death zone, out of oxygen, and snow blind.

I wasn't praying for the entire descent. I was praying for the ability to take one more step.

I had no idea how I was going to make it back to high camp and then down the Lhotse Face, through the Western Cwm, and the Khumbu Icefall. I literally couldn't see the outcome. I just knew I had to keep moving.

It's easy to talk about faith when life is going well. It's something else entirely to rely on it when you don't know how the story ends.

That's when faith is tested. Not when the outcome is clear, but when it isn't.

Most of us face moments like that. Maybe it's a diagnosis. A job that feels uncertain. A relationship you're fighting for. A prayer you've been waiting months, maybe years, to see answered.

We all reach places where the path ahead isn't clear.

Faith doesn't remove the uncertainty, and it doesn't guarantee the outcome we want. What it does is give us the courage to keep moving when we can't see beyond the next step.

Looking back, I know I wasn't climbing alone. I couldn't see what lay ahead, but I found the strength to keep taking one more step.

So let me leave you with this question:

Where in your life are you being asked to trust, even though you can't yet see what's ahead?

Faith isn't proven when everything makes sense. It's forged when you keep walking anyway.

—
Brian Dickinson
Author. Speaker. Host of Calm in the Chaos Podcast
briandickinson.net