Every Mama would face a mountain of some sort, at one time or another.
Might be your mountain load of laundry, or your mountain heap of guilt and shame.
Mountains are mountains, and mountains need moving.
Years ago we sang along with Tommy, hummed along his famous line: “I’ll be Your Everything” .
Somehow somewhere, deep within we hope to be somebody’s everything, solve everybody’s something — we crave to be deeply needed, desperately wanted: but Tommy died in utter hopelessness, and ended the song of his life with a thousand broken pieces of a heart.
He was crushed by the mountains of pain that threaten us the same.
Every day there are Tommy dying everywhere this slow bleeding death — dying under the crushing mountains of problems that always always need mouths to move.
Mountains always need mouths to move.
Up in the lobby of a resort, there were mountains everywhere.
Mountains that take on our admiration, capture our attention, demand our aspiration.
It was cold.
And in the frozen state of a heart, I used to believe: that you will only find love when you find the right somebody, that you can only amount in life when you have the support of everybody, and that you can only soar with success when you’re liked by most bodies.
Lyrics can shape the thought, but only the Word alters the hearts, moves the mountain.
I break every lie of it now and confess it through and through, that my identity in life come from knowing that Someone and my significance come from being loved by that Somebody.
Turns out that mountains can move when the mouths speaks only of love.
Turns out that we’re called to this habit of rising – rising to the occasion when the pressure mounts, rising to face the trial when the pain deepens.
We can either bow down to the mountains of problems in our world, or believe in the might of the mountain-Maker in the Word.
Because this is the remedy to pain: every victory begins with taking up the weapon of the Word in our mouth.
It’s what we say to our mountains that determines our ascend or descend.
There are swaths of land before me.
Waiters carrying coffee, tourists posing pretty, and these kids?, they’re faking fights like Bruce Lees would, up there on the balcony that day.
I am thinking life’s full of these raw, rugged mountains, and how on earth do I move them out of my way?
Realisation sometimes comes slow after confession.
I whisper it slow at first:
“I am a new creation – the past can’t touch me.”
“I am absolutely redeemed – the world can’t own me.”
“I am altogether forgiven – fear can’t grab me.”
I mouth the Word slow, I let faith seeps in.
I can feel every limitation lifting off.
I lift hands up, move my lips to worship. The Word on my tablet etching ink on the tablet of my human heart.
Confession always precedes possession, and the right confession always invites triumphant victory.
And it really doesn’t matter what people say about you, as long as you’re clear what God says about you.
And the way you feel isn’t the right barometer to how things really are.
The way others size us is not the same the way He sees us, and loves us.
Our confession moves every mountain when we declare to the world what the Word says despite our situation, in spite of our emotions.
The troubles of life, the pain of people, the disappointment of relationships – maybe they are mountains that teach us how to move our mouths until we remember:
He is our El Shaddai, our Provider, our Sustainer, our All Sufficient One. He promises to be our weight-bearer, our ever present shield, our everlasting arm.
The only way to rise to the mountains of heartaches and overcome the mountains of impossibilities is to lift our face to One that stands higher above the mountains.
The way to gain victory is to always to anchor yourself to One who’s victorious.
We don’t always know how to figure our way out of the mountains.
We may not know how to fix things, tweak things, turn things. We can feel the imperfections of it all and still stand confessing: that in Christ, no voices can condemn you, no judgements can undermine you, no previous mistakes can undo what Christ has done in you.
We can listen long enough to the problems we see in us and forget the depth of reality of who He’s made us to be.
So to every Mama facing any mountain today, we can mouth this:
“God’s made me into a threshing sledge – new and sharp, with teeth. I will thresh you, mountain! I’ll crush you! I’ll make you, hills, like chaff!” (Isaiah 41:15)
Do you feel hopeless?
You can declare hope to your soul, peace to your situation.
Do you feel powerless?
You can announce peace, who is a Person, not a place, nor a position, or some sort of protection.
And when you’re tired of fighting against the mountains of your life, your Maker’s whispering to you:
When you feel like giving up, when you feel like running away, you can instead rest in your Maker who works miracles in the moment.
And right beside me, lies my own little miracle that day.
The Husband humouring me, snapping pictures away while my eyes are shut. And this baby-kid?, mimicking everything I was doing!
And maybe to every Mama struggling with her mountain need to hear this too — that there might just be a kid or two following your quiet steps through the fog.
That the mountains are stirring at the whisper of your voice.
Peace is descending.
After your quiet victory, your bold confession.