One Step at a Time

‘Step by step.’  ‘One day at a time.’  ‘Every journey begins with a single step.’  Our culture has a variety of wisdom-sayings that encourage us to take things slowly and deliberately and patiently.  These sayings are very important, because in our anxiety and haste, we can feel like we have to “fix everything RIGHT NOW!!!”  But when we take things slowly, and only expect to figure things out “one step at a time,” even our most difficult projects can become manageable.

A number of years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Zimbabwe to visit our dear friends, Mark and Ruth, who were working there.  A highlight of the trip was a day-hike that we took with Mark.  We were hiking up one of the many kopjes (medium-sized hills of rock; pronounced “copies”) around Zimbabwe.  The kopje we climbed is named Ngoma Kurira, and is about 25 minutes outside the capital city of Harare.

Mark had told us that it would be a “nice day hike.”  Well, my assumptions about what constituted a “nice day hike” (easy, gentle slopes; about a 45 minute walk) did not match the reality of Ngoma Kurira.  The hike involved navigating a small ravine, in which we placed our feet on one side of the ravine, while we leaned across to place our hands on the other side of the ravine.  We then crab-walked our way for a short distance, while virtually horizontal over the ravine.  (If you’re having trouble getting a visual image, that’s probably just as well.  Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.)

But the most demanding—and ultimately, the most satisfying—part of the hike was climbing the face of the rock, a 500-yard climb at a 60-degree angle.  Standing at the base of the rock and looking up, I laughed nervously and said, “We’re going up that?”  Mark said, “Yep.”  I said, “No, seriously.  For real?”  Mark said, “Yep.”  I continued, “Mark, I’m not sure I can make it to the top of that thing.”  And then Mark said—and this is what blew me away—“Right now, your task is not to get to the top.  Your task, right now, is to focus on finding a place for your left foot to go.  Then, your task will be to find a place for your right foot to go.  Eventually, you’ll be at the top.  But you’ll only get there one step at a time.”  So, for the next 45 minutes, I focused on one step at a time, not thinking about anything else, as we climbed the steepest, longest rock-face I have ever climbed. 

45 minutes later, we were at the top.  It worked.  My nervous, skittish self had become a rock-climber.

So many times in our lives, we become consumed by, threatened by, intimidated by the big questions in our lives.  “What will I do with my life?  How can I become a good person?  How can I put together this major project?  How can I finish this work of art?  How will I ever raise a child successfully?”  We can become so demoralized by where we think we need to end up that we do not pay attention to our next step.  “What is the next thing I need to do?” 

It is good and necessary to have a general sense of where we are headed.  Otherwise, we’re likely to go nowhere.  (After all, we did select this one, specific kopje to climb.)  But once we have established a general sense of where we’re going, then we can concentrate our energies on the much more modest task of, “What is the very next thing that I need to do?”  Sometimes, the “very next thing” is simply to pray for clarity about what the “very next thing” actually is.   One step at a time.