Holding Hands

 

Small children are taught to face dangers and difficulties by holding hands with their daddies.

Most people grow out of this.  I never did.  

 When I was 13, my Dad and I decided to climb a “fourteener”.  Early one summer morning when the air was still chilly enough to make clouds of our breath in the half-light, we started up Long’s Peak together. 

Our legs were just warmed up, when we came up behind a group of college age guys, the football team at CU in Boulder.  For a few minutes, we hiked close enough behind two of the guys to overhear their words.   “This is pretty tough, a girl couldn’t make it...” I didn’t linger to hear the response. Instantly I determined to beat those college athletes to the top of the mountain.   I switched into a high gear and blazed by, pointedly flipping my long blond braids over my shoulder as I passed.  We left the football team in the dust, and raced them the rest of the day. 

We flew through shady forests, miles filled with lodge pole pines growing tightly together, narrow tops pointing toward heaven.  We strode through the gnarled trees at timberline, not pausing to wonder at the fields of miniature wild flowers that carpet the mountainside. We scrambled through the boulder field.    Sweaty, and with legs beginning to ache, we reached a narrow hole in the rocky ridge where climbers pass to the back of the peak for the final push to the top. 

This final mile crushed my bid to defend the strength of girls everywhere.  The mountainside is steep; each misstep is accompanied by the scrape and rattle of loose rocks tumbling down the sheer drop-off of thousands of feet.  Slips are sometimes fatal. 

Fear of falling slowed me down.   My short little body defeated me.  Even stretching as far as I could, my fingers and toes couldn’t grasp the next little ledge or crack I needed to use to pull myself up the last rocky cliff.  

That’s where hands came in.  Over and over, my dad’s strong hands boosted me from behind. In particularly difficult spots he scrambled up ahead of me, reached down, grasped my arm, and pulled me up from above.  “It’s OK Bethy, I’ve got you.” 

My rivals, the CU football guys caught on to my determination, if not the motivation behind it.   They slowed their own pace to help pull and push me up.  Eventually, I sat at the top scraped, and triumphant, sharing lunch at the top of the world with my former enemies.  The fact that they gave me a hand up made all the difference.

During the steep and dangerous seasons of adult life, when I can’t quite reach a firm foothold, it is still a father’s hand that pulls me up and over.

William Barkley said,  “When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear.  We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.” 

In the book of Isaiah, God says “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you.'" He is saying to me, "its OK Bethy, I’ve got you.”