Thoughts and Writings from the furnace by Kent Weathersby

Heavy Lifting

It’s easy to dismiss as hyperbole the Scriptures that promise that if one has enough faith, he can move a mountain. Mark, the author of one of the Gospels and who is known for being terse, remembered the Lord’s word’s this way: “Truly I tell you if anyone says to this mountain, throw yourself into the sea; and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.”

There is no recorded history that I can find that reports that a mountain was literally moved by faith. Earth movers and engineers rearrange or eliminate mountains all the time for mining, road building, or just to eliminate green space for fear that deer and other wild animals might have places to live. But moving a mountain by sheer faith is obviously another matter. Exerting the faith to literally cast a mountain into the sea is more like the practice of magic rather than faith.

As we all can bear witness, life is punctuated with hardships. There are those that are little more than inconveniences and seem to somehow sort themselves out. Others interfere with the rhythm of a peaceful life and require determined attention and the expenditure of valuable and often absent resources. And then there are those personal“mountains” that achieve dizzying heights and are defined by vertical cliff faces and shear precipices.Those that reflect the despair conveyed in Dante’ Divine Comedy‒ “Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.” Ever been there?

Anyone who has had to stand by helplessly as a spouse or child sank into a destructive addiction that even multiple rehabilitation programs have failed to rescue them from;or, anyone who has watched a loved one become afflicted by a potentially fatal disease for which there is no cure know the kinds of mountains that I believe were referred to in Mark’s Gospel and in other places in Scripture.

I can’t explain why people of great faith are not always able to move those kinds of mountains but, I know some who have. It was the fervent effectual prayer and fasting of a couple that I love which caused the rescue of their son during his last gasp under the spell of alcohol and drug addiction and which propelled him as a rising star in the Atlanta hospitality scene. I am distantly related to a couple the husband of which was diagnosed with glioblastoma; a brain cancer which is almost always fatal. And yet, the prayers of his and our family resulted in several years of continuing remission. Years during which the couple welcomed a second child‒ born in the shadow of a displaced “mountain.”

I hope no one who happens on this story has ever, or will ever, experience a Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Not just the blahs or periodic emotional storms that most of us experience from time to time. Rather, the debilitating kind that ravage one’s ability to think coherently and that plunges them into an ever-tightening spiral that defies understanding. The kind that nothing you can think of can unravel and everything you do to help yourself makes it worse. It attacks relationships, employment, and even physical health. This kind is the “valley of the shadow of death” surrounded by mountains the tops of which can’t even be seen let alone climbed.

When I was at the top of my game with everything a person could ask for or even dream of, I descended into that valley. I was robbed of my career as an airline pilot and was cast into such darkness that I was grasping for a grip on reality. And yet, the disease withheld the mercy of killing me without my complicity. Most of my thoughts were like involuntary self-inflicted dagger wounds. I continually fought suicidal ideation and was finally hospitalized to little avail except that over my twin-sized bed there in my room, hung a poster with the words:“a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right but it will not come near you.”

I gathered the vestiges of a once beautiful life and resigned myself to plow through the blinding pain at any cost. I would not deprive my wife of a husband, albeit a broken one, or my children of a father and burden them with the legacy of suicide. I had hope but no solution except to trust that “it would not come near me.” Left foot, right foot and damn the pain became my mantra. I fought back. I started a business. I learned to scuba dive; I climbed an 11,000-foot mountain. I played Barbie and Ken with my daughter and helped with homework even though the powerful anxiety made me feel as if a pine cone was lodged in my throat. During the ordeal, I was given a best friend to walk with me; he is closer to me than a brother. I had loyal church friends and a beautiful family that gave me reasons to live.

That was my “mountain” and just reading about it may be depressing to you. But, in His timing, I was restored. Just as in the story of Job, I was given double what I had lost. I was returned to the cockpit and completed a celebrated career. That business I started is now a multinational enterprise. My three daughters gave me 7 grandchildren which include educators, a recording artist in talks with a major label, and more than one athlete including an Olympic Gold Medalist. I have two, going on three, mighty sons-in-law.

My restoration came not so much by my faith, but rather by my obedience. It was the faith of those who loved and cared about me that cast my mountain into the sea. Should it reappear, I will fight back and trust God to do the heavy lifting.

“I waited patiently on the Lord and He inclined unto me. He brought me up also out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a Rock and established my goings. And He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it and fear, and trust also in the Lord.”

Kent