Hungry for the heights: what to do with this ambition?

Anyone else a horizon seeker? Always hungry for the heights, to see over te roofs, to gulp the clear, crisp air up there. I want to feel the movement of the wind against my skin; to know I am at the top, the very top.

When I was little I would find the furthest rock on every beach, the furthest out into the sea and clamber and clamber until I reached it. Never mind the scratched up knees and how wet I was when I finally made it.

I still have that feeling. The determination to reach the top. I have it all the time. With every new project or thing I embark on. Within moments, my dreams have recalibrated and I want to reach the tip-top of the mountain. When Sam once took me to the driving range before I even took my first swing I had imagined myself to be an undiscovered genius…thinking, “what if this is my destiny and we learn that I should have been a pro golfer all along!” No prizes for guessing whether or not I hit the ball with that swing.

It’s there, deep inside me. No matter how I wrestle with it. I want to reach the heights. To climb that staircase to the very top. What’s there? I want to get to the place where I can’t go any further.

As a teenager this was great. This is how we push and we make a difference. This is how I made progress. This was the engine that pushed me on. Got my homework done first night.

But couple this drive with the limitations of my life, and this is also how I end up sitting halfway up staircases exhausted and depressed. I gaze upward at a seemingly never-ending spiral of stairs, twisting out of sight and completely unachievable. Ambition can be a cruel mistress. She promises rooftops but she doesn’t have the key to the lift.

Sometimes when I’m dreaming of some achievement or other, it seems everyone else has found a stairlift. Oh the injustice when you’re putting in the graft, and someone whistles past you, without seeming to lift a finger, pocketing the stars before you’ve even finished catching your breath.

Others yell at you from the top of the stairwell - “Put in the hours and you’ll get here in the end!” So I stagger to my feet and continue to hobble up, one step at a time, eyes on my twisted feet. I wonder if I will ever make it. Is it worth it anyway?

Surely this is not Jesus’ intention for me. To spend my life hobbling up stairs.

I Christian-ised this way of walking for a time. Thinking if my ambitions were the right ones then I was supposed to spend my life trudging up stairs. The achievements just had to be “worthy” ones.

Then for a time I abandoned my ambition altogether. I think for a while, this was right. To let go of all desire for achievement, acknowledging Jesus really doesn’t need me to do anything at all. Lay my hunger for heights down at his feet and curl up right there at the foot of the stairs.

But then came a day when that jaguar re-awoke in me. “I want to go to the top again,” it whispered. And I didn’t know what to do with it! Surely ambition is bad? It makes me pushy; it drives me to ignore my body. I shouldn’t want anything at all but Jesus!

As ever, it is with kindness He approaches, as I panic in the stairwell. He takes my hand and he says, “I love every single part of you. I made you, and this bit that you’re wrestling with, it can be good. So let’s try again, but this time, I have a new way of walking.”

“He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to stand on the heights.” Psalm 18:33

It is not his desire for me to trudge alone on feet that get consistently tired. He promises that His burden is light!

But what is it Jesus? How do I learn your new way of walking?

“Eye contact.”

Eye contact. The first love language we learn to speak. The voice in which babies can learn they are safe and held and help will always come. The language that transcends understanding or even our words, and connects with the deepest depths of us.

And so I stare into his eyes, get lost in the wilds and wonders I find there. I know if I chase after those eyes they will lead me somewhere good, because they tell me I am seen, I am held and help will always come.

And as I begin once more to walk, it dawns on me that this no longer feels like walking. Not like the trudging. The weight of expectation, the pressure of those stairs above me, the tiredness in my feet is gone.

My feet are transformed. I am transformed. It is his energy moving me. It is his strength. The walk is no longer my own but his. And I am as light of foot as a deer.

I trust him I will reach a big wide sky some time and I am lightened. Lightened in my blue plastic a&e seat. Lightened in curled under my duvet because here, even here, I am still taking steps, every time I take a breath and meet those eyes.

There appears still to be no lift, but that doesn’t mean I am not lifted. Lifted by his grace, lifted in my soul, lifted by the story he is breathing into my life.

So on I walk, further up and pushing towards that gaze, until the horizon opens out before me. And as I look out into the sheeted light on the distant horizon, and the rooftops spread below me, something takes away my breath. For I know the wilds and wonders I see there. I saw them first in his eyes.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for all your shares and comments. It really is like paper planes of encouragement landing in my world, especially in moments when that world feels very small.

Katy x

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