More than just bragging rights.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. And one day this girl and her dad went hiking in the mountains. They were on the trail but the little girl wasn’t satisfied because it wasn’t REAL mountain climbing to go on the trail. She wanted to go higher and higher and do REAL mountain climbing. She begged her dad to leave the trail. And so they did. The dad picked up his little daughter and they started climbing the mountain. Off the trail. But then, after a while, the dad slipped and dropped his daughter. The little girl fell from her dad’s arms and hit her head on a sharp rock.

Today, that girl is much more grown up and whenever the typical ice-breaker question is asked, “Tell us your name, age, grade, and an interesting fact about yourself!” she always says, “My dad dropped me off a mountain.” and she is easily amused by the looks that she gets from all the people around her.

Even though that incident happened long ago, that girl still wants to climb higher and higher on the seemingly endless mountain of life. The mountain side is full of twists and turns and steep climbs. And she is always afraid of falling. Getting dropped. Hitting her head on a rock. Suffering from the hurt and pain. All of these have happened numerous times for she always seems to try and conquer this mountain in the hardest way possible. For some reason, she finds herself the same little girl with the desire to go off the trail and climb the mountain in the most difficult ways and make things ever so much more harder for herself. In times like these, she has to remember to pause, take a step back, and think about the consequences of taking the hard way up. If her head is set in the right place, she’ll remain on the trail and keep trekking. Unfortunately, sometimes she recklessly goes off the trail and falls and hits her head on the rock and suffers the consequences. However, every fall, every drop, every hurt is a new lesson. Lessons in caution and tact and wisdom and experience that ultimately teach her the proper way to climb the mountain. 

The girl’s mountain story is much more that just bragging rights. She sees it as an analogy of the great journey of life and how she will one day conquer it and make her way all the way to the top. 

Where she can look back down at all she had accomplished