Journal Entries from Kili!
Journal Entry #1
February 9, 2014
Kilimanjaro has become so beyond real. It was always a one day far off thing that we'd do this. Here we are in Tanzania on the eve before we start our climb. If you would have told my friends and family a year ago that I'd be climbing the tallest free standing mountain in the world while camping for seven days in a tent on the ground they would have said dream on. Honestly camping still doesn't appeal to me today. After long discussions with the gap year staff I learned to look at it from a new perspective that has grown me tremendously in my faith and that is spending seven days with god. If you look in the bible some of the most monumental moments occur in nature when god reveal something to man.
Journal Entry #3
February 11, 2014
Today went a lot better than yesterday in the sense that I was able to keep way ahead of the pace. It actually felt like we were getting somewhere there was a lot more talking today than yesterday. However despite all the chatter I feel like I was able to connect better with the lord. As we hiked the steep mossy hills I began to get a rythum in my head and that quickly became my mantra, "I believe help my unbelief". Thats all I kept saying in my head with every step I took, the fatigue got stronger and I got weaker. The only way I was going to make it to camp none the less the next couple days was through god and god alone. I feel like I'm the 4th person in gap year to say this but it just proof of how wearing mentally and physically the mountain had on all of us.
A couple of hours after that journal entry I woke up with a horrible cough making it severely hard to breathe. Blair stayed up with me all morning we read Jesus calling while the porters brought us tea in our tent. It didn't seem to help. A few hours later during breakfast I was coughing up a lung. Being told it was unsafe to continue crushed me. I feel like it was something I'd been looking forward to since gap year started. I replayed different senarios in which would let me continue like taking diamox or going at a slower pace the day prior but none of it was any use now.
In the woods each step I took I felt so close to god. I can only help but wonder if its because I'm so used to being in control that this I had really no control over what my body was deciding to do. Within this 'power struggle' so to speak I also learned that even though in life when I think I'm in control it's a false sense of control because ultimately God is the one thats pulling all the strings. When things get hard we turn to god because we have no where else to turn. Which was kinda a reality shock to me that's so true of me. When things get good instead of praising him and remaining in constant communication with Him I tend to put him in my back pocket.
I honnestly think that mountain is thing that changed me the most this year in terms of the perspective I gained toward my relationship with the lord. I don't really think it's anything I could describe that any of you would understand it's just something that will remain between me and god. If you think 9 months can change a person try two days on that mountain.
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