Made For The Climb

My roots were never shallow. They were planted in the hard earth of hills that whispered warnings, in rivers that remembered every name not written down. The land I come from speaks in layers—not just dirt, but stories buried beneath dust and moss. My people knew: the earth can be your healer or your grave. It will cradle you like a mother, or consume you like a storm, depending on what you carry when you walk across it.

And still, even the earth submits to the hand that shaped it.

Jehovah, who weighs the mountains in a balance (Isaiah 40:12), formed me from this soil—knowing it could both hold me and humble me. And yes, I have been humbled. I have lain in darkness. I have sat in silence where no bird sang, no breeze stirred. Like Job, I have said, “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished” (Job 17:1), and still, He did not forget me.

I am made of the same matter as the ones who walked barefoot and brazen through bramble and snow. I hear their voices in the rustling of pine needles, in the low hum of wind before a storm. These women did not need to be loud to be strong. They did not write books, but they carved strength into the spines of their daughters. I carry them still.

I have known the weight of being buried—not with soil, but with judgment, betrayal, the things people whisper about women like me. I was lowered into a grave of silence, layered in shame, far below where light could reach. But even there, Jehovah saw. “If I make my bed in Sheol, look! You are there” (Psalm 139:8). His memory holds what others choose to forget. His hands go deeper than the deepest wound. I was not discarded—I was being gathered.

And when I cried out—not loudly, but with the cracked voice of the barely breathing—He listened. “I waited patiently for Jehovah, and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on a crag” (Psalm 40:1–2). That crag was not smooth. It was jagged. But it was solid. And it was mine.

I have faced death more than once—on the outside, in the marrow of my body; on the inside, in the hollows of my faith. I’ve felt the tremors of giving up. But something in me refused. Not because I am more brave than others, but because I was made for the climb. It’s in my blood. In the prayers muttered over open wounds. In the hands that learned to work and to war and to weave—all in the same motion.

Jehovah did not plant me to perish. He planted me to rise again.

So when the storms come—and they will—I do not ask them to pass. I bow into them like my ancestors bowed into blizzards, into burning sun, into exile. I do not run. I remember. I remember that I am not just surviving—I am testifying.

Let the earth try to claim me. Let the past try to shame me. Let others look and see dust. Jehovah looks and sees design. He knows my frame, and remembers that I am dust (Psalm 103:14)—but He also knows what He can do with dust.

He can breathe into it. He can lift it. He can resurrect it.

And so I rise again. With the mountains in my lungs. With scripture braided into my spine. With the voices of my ancestors pounding in my blood like a drumbeat older than memory. I am not what was buried. I am what was restored - gathered from the dust, remembered by Jehovah, and walking forward with every step etched in purpose.