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I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?

So goes the first verse of Katie Brown's favorite Bible passage, Psalm 121.

How fitting: Katie, 19, one of the world's best rock climbers, is always "lifting her eyes to the hills."

And she knows very well where her help comes from:

My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip …

Those are comforting verses to Katie, who leans on the Maker every time she climbs.

"For me, climbing involves a lot of prayer because I don't have the strength to do it on my own," says Katie, a 5-foot, 85-pounder who has won several national and international events. "Climbing is so challenging mentally and physically. I marvel at how people can climb without having somebody bigger to rely on."

Katie says that although competitive climbing is a safe sport—ropes and harnesses keep climbers from falling very far—there's still an element of fear. And that's a good thing.

"Some degree of fear is healthy, because people who don't have any fear usually end up dying," says Katie, who lives with her family in Golden, Colorado. "But you can't let fear control you.

"My faith in God doesn't get rid of my fear, but it does help me deal with it. And some days are better than others."

And some days she even questions God about what's happening on "the hills." Like at last year's Arco Rock Masters event in Italy. Katie had run away with the championship, and started thinking about pocketing the $8,000 first-place prize.

"Everybody was congratulating me," she says. "Then the judges came up to me and said I was disqualified."

They said Katie had illegally stepped on a bolt during her climb, giving her an unfair advantage over the other athletes. The judges had watched a videotape of Katie's climb to confirm their decision.

"I didn't feel I had stepped on the bolt, but sometimes your foot bumps it by accident," says Katie. "But I didn't want to argue about it. I just said, 'OK, that's fine.' And then I went off and cried by myself."

And she "lifted up her eyes" and asked, "Why?"

"I asked God why he allowed this to happen," she says. "And I came to the conclusion that I must have been thinking too much about winning the money, which shouldn't be important anyway."

Though Katie loves her sport, she says she doesn't want to do it forever.

"I love climbing," she says. "It's a very individualistic sport, where you pretty much have the freedom and independence to do things your own way. And I love being outdoors.

"But there are a lot of other things I want to do," says Katie, who is taking a year off from college to travel. "I want to maybe do some translation work. I might like to be a missionary at some point. I just know that I want to do things other than climbing the rest of my life."

The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

That's how Psalm 121 ends. And that's how Katie wants to live—whether she's climbing or not.

"As a Christian," she says, "I want to do whatever God's will is, whatever I do and wherever I go."

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Campus Life magazine. Click here for reprint information on Campus Life.

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