The other day, I heard Caroline, my roommate (and teammate and friend and fellow language learner), playing a song that immediately took me back to Word Retreat, which is the retreat my home church in Alabama has every January for the youth group. I have so many memories of sweet fellowship during those retreats as a teenager and also so many moments where the Lord met me and filled me with peace.
The song is called “Nothing I Hold Onto.” Here are some of the lines:
“I lean not on my own understanding
My life is in the hands of the Maker of heaven”
“I will climb this mountain
With my hands wide open”
I have been listening to this song more over the past several days and it’s been incredibly comforting. 15-year-old Sophia sang it when she didn’t know how to handle things happening around her that year. Senior year of high school Sophia sang it when college and the future seemed all too overwhelming. Now, 24-year-old Sophia is singing it in her apartment in Albania as she looks out the window at snow-capped mountains getting ready to go stumble through a conversation in a foreign language, and thinking about how the Lord has provided for every need in all of these moments. And that even though the years and seasons change, He remains the same and has never left or wavered in love or faithfulness.
The mountains in my backyard have become an even stronger marker of the promises and presence of the Creator, who formed them, formed me, and formed the lives of those around me. I can climb the mountain of this life - of navigating language learning, of anxiety that comes with simple tasks in unfamiliar places, of baring heartbreak of missing family and friends back home, of hoping and praying for the people around me to hear the Gospel and know the goodness of God - with my hands wide open because the Lord has gone before me, is next to me each day, and knows all that it is to come.