Anchor Points

Part 1: What the Rope Is Tied To

My father taught me to climb almost as soon as I could walk, and climbing has a blunt way of sorting out your priorities. On a rock face, your rope is only ever as good as the anchor it’s tied to. You can have the best rope money can buy, coiled beautifully, clipped through shiny kit, and if the anchor is poor, all of it is decoration.

Most of us live as though we are the anchor, as though what holds us is our own strength and nerve and grip. I lived that way for years, and it took some hard falls, on mountains and off them, to teach me the obvious. Grip strength means nothing in a fall. The anchor takes the load.

Trusting what you cannot see

On the highest mountains you clip into ropes fixed by people you have never met, anchored to points buried in snow and rock that you will never see. Every climber who has ever moved up a fixed line has made that act of trust, usually without thinking about it. Your life hangs, quite literally, on work done out of sight by someone else.

I find that a fairly accurate picture of how life actually works, and a fairly humbling one. We like the version of the story where we hold ourselves up. It isn’t true on a mountain and I’ve stopped believing it’s true anywhere else.

The 3am audit

You don’t need a rock face to test your anchors. Try three o’clock in the morning. We’ve all been there, lying awake doing the audit. The work situation, the scan result we’re waiting on, the child who’s struggling, the number in the account. Whatever we’re anchored to gets found in that hour. If it’s the job, the 3am audit asks what happens if the job goes. If it’s being fit and capable, the audit asks about the day the body gives up. If it’s reputation, the audit reminds us how fast that weather changes.

None of those things are bad. Work, strength, a good name, money in the account. They’re decent kit. They’re just poor anchors, and the difference only shows under load.

The verse I keep coming back to

For me the deepest anchor has a name, and I’ve stopped being shy about saying so. The verse I have carried into jungles, oceans and boardrooms is from Joshua: Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. I don’t treat that as poetry. I treat it like a fixed line. It was set long before I arrived at the mountain, by someone stronger than me, and it has taken every fall I’ve put on it.

It’s easy to treat faith as backup kit, something stuffed at the bottom of the pack for emergencies. I carried mine that way for years. The seasons that broke me taught me to tie into it first, before the weather, not after.

Where this series is going

This is part one of a new series, Anchor Points. Eight parts, one question: when the weather turns in our lives, and it always turns, what actually holds? Over the coming parts we’ll walk through the anchors one by one. The people on the other end of the rope. The training nobody sees. The weight we carry that we never needed. How to fall well. The quiet anchors of stillness and prayer. What it means to hold the rope for someone else. And finally what it all ties into.

For now, one question to sit with this week, and I’d love your answer in the comments, because your replies feed these pieces. When the weather turned last time, what did you find you were actually tied to?

Next Sunday: the other end of the rope.

Never Give Up.

Bear