Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to keep in mind that when things go wrong up in the Death Zone—and sooner or later they always do—the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save their clients’ lives. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air 

In early May of 1996, a little before midnight, two mountain expedition teams left from Camp Four on the South Col of Mount Everest in a bid to summit the world’s highest peak. Led by experienced professional Everest climbers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, the paying clients and Nepalese Sherpas ventured out of their tents in subzero temperatures to ascend the mountain the Tibetan people call “Chomolungma.” Weather conditions seemingly in their favor, team members strapped oxygen masks on their faces and started up Everest’s famed Southeast Ridge, aiming at the 29,028-foot pinnacle looming high above. A third group from Taiwan joined the conga line inching up the mountain for what was to be a very long day.No one could have foreseen the deadly combination of factors that led to the greatest tragedy in Everest history.

In his riveting work Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer, a climbing journalist and client of Scott Fischer, offers a haunting account of the journey on Everest that fateful day. Three dozen people made the trip, most of them novice climbing clients paying upward to sixty-five thousand dollars and two months of their time for the privilege of being one of the elite few who have reached the peak. After coming so far, they were not about to back down.

The conditions on Everest are always hazardous. Above the “Death Zone” at twenty-five thousand feet, millions of brain cells are killed as climbers exert tremendous amounts of physical and emotional energy navigating their way up the rock and ice. Breathing is worse than trying to suck a lung’s worth of air through a thin cocktail straw. And without adequate amounts of bottled oxygen, each climber is at risk of pulmonary and cerebral edema. Nail-pounding headaches throb. Vision becomes blurred. Senses dull. Objectivity and clear thinking diminish as consciousness falters. No matter how magnificent the view from the top of the world, life cannot be sustained in the thin air of a lifetime achievement.

By 1:00 p.m., the nonnegotiable turnaround time for Krakauer’s group, several people including Krakauer had reached the summit and were in the process of making their way down. Among experienced Everest climbers, it is common knowledge that whether one has reached the summit or not, it is critically important to head down the mountain no later than the agreed-upon turnaround time to avoid being trapped high on the peak overnight, risking exposure to subzero temperatures, wind and snowstorms, and the body’s inability to sustain itself in such extreme conditions. 

Earlier in the day, the congestion of so many people snaking their way up the mountain complicated communication and previously agreed-upon responsibilities. Anchors weren’t set. Ropes went unfixed, wasting valuable time. The three expeditions became intermixed at various points up and down the Southeast Ridge. Hall and Fischer, along with other Sherpas, climbed with slower clients, trying to get them to the top, losing track of where their other clients were on the mountain. Once the turnaround time was ignored, everything necessary for a successful summit bid and speedy climb down went sideways. 

With climbers now racing to get down the mountain and others still pushing for the summit, bottlenecks ensued. By 1:17 p.m., the wind picked up as weather conditions worsened on nearby peaks. As Krakauer snapped a few photos from the roof of the world, he saw in the distance what should have hastened everyone off the peak. “Training my lens on a pair of climbers approaching the summit, I saw something that until that moment had escaped my attention. To the south, where the sky had been perfectly clear just an hour earlier, a blanket of clouds hid Pumori, Ama Dablam, and the lesser peaks surrounding Everest.” 

Errors in communication increased as bottled oxygen reserves decreased. Altitude sickness drained logical reasoning. The climbers were extremely fatigued; most had not slept for the previous seventy-two hours. The resulting exhaustion slowed the group down as the stronger climbers literally dragged the weaker ones up and down the route. Poor leadership and bad decision making proved fatal. 

By the time Krakauer made it to his tent around 6:00 p.m., Chomolunga had awakened with a hurricane-like blizzard in full force, mauling everyone in its path. Zero visibility in the whiteout conditions made each step a potential fall. The more than twenty people still high on the mountain stumbled down, teammates dragging near unconscious teammates in the dark, leaning hard into one hundred mile an hour winds. On the way back to the tents, a group of eleven climbers became hopelessly lost in the dark on the South Col. They wandered around for hours in the dark and freezing conditions, almost falling off the Kashung Face into Tibet.

Two days later, when the merciless storm finally subsided, both expedition leaders, Hall and Fischer, were confirmed dead as well as six other climbers. The elusive, dangerous beauty of Everest had proved herself once again. Who would have thought?

Only days earlier in the wide glacial valley of the Western Cwm at the lower base camps, who would have thought that these expeditions were headed into a blinding, ferocious maelstrom? Though the guides and climbers knew that any attempt on Everest was dangerous, extremely dangerous, who would have thought the combination of unexpected events and crowded conditions would prove so lethal?

As I flipped to the last page of the book, a chill climbed up my spine. The story was so compelling; I was ready to turn back to page 1 to start all over again. Like millions of other Americans, I first followed the Everest tragedy in the news. When Into Thin Air hit the bookstores, I devoured it in front of a warm, crackling fire from the safety of my brown leather chair while drinking a fresh, hot cup of French roast. Krista, my wife, did make fun of me, though, for wearing my climbing harness as I read. 

After finishing the book I quietly thanked God I didn’t have to climb down the icy knife-edge of the Southeast Ridge in the dark, where a single misstep would have sent me cartwheeling seven thousand feet off the backside of Everest and into Tibet. I wiggled my fingers and appreciated the fact that our room temperature was not seventy degrees below zero, that I hadn’t lost my glove, and that I was not Beck Weathers, whose hand turned into a frozen black stump that was later amputated along with assorted other body parts. I was grateful I didn’t have to battle the subzero hurricane winds ready to flick me down to base camp like an NHL hockey puck. Think about it: All that wind and you still can’t breathe.

Mountaintop experiences aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

The 1996 Everest tragedy is a story about a group of people with incredible aspirations and the best of intentions. The teams aimed for the highest peak but they encountered the perfect storm. Each expedition started out together but ended up divided. They made plans and set goals for the top but broke commitments and ignored responsibilities along the route. When the sun was out and the way crystal clear, everyone on the team had perfect direction, but when the storm hit, the climbers became lost in search of shelter. In howling winds and blinding snow, they leaned on friends for survival and security, only to be led in the wrong direction. Many had dreamed about this adventure for years, but nobody imagined it would come to this. 

Why does Krakauer’s story sound so eerily familiar? Maybe because it is like so many marriages you and I know. Maybe even your own marriage. Or mine. Think of all your married friends. Go back a few years. Remember all the weddings you attended? Then one day, you received a phone call. Or a friend asked you to lunch. By the time the romaine salad had arrived, you’d gotten the news.

It’s all over. Finished. Kaput. Who would have thought?

I don’t believe for a second that anyone stands at the altar before God, family, and friends, only to secretly conspire in the deepest corner of their heart: Let’s see, how can I mess up my marriage?

Nobody thinks like that. Your friends don’t. You don’t. I don’t. 

What couple isn’t like an Everest expedition party that wants to climb to the highest peak and live on the thin air of love alone? Who doesn’t begin the adventurous journey of marriage eager to hit every relationship peak along the trail of spending a lifetime together in love? What couple doesn’t want to reach the mountaintop of companionship? The summit of friendship? The pinnacle of belonging? The climax of intimacy? The highest peak of unconditional love? 

Like many other tragedies we see on the news and read in the paper, the Everest tragedy triggered an avalanche of debate, books, articles, and lawsuits. And lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking. What if, before the storm hit, the Everest climbers had the advantage of another viewpoint? What if one of the climbers could have hopped into a helicopter (though impossible at such heights) and stood on the nearby peaks of Yhotse or Ama Dablam to see the changing weather patterns? What if the teams maintained the personal discipline to stick to the original agreed-upon plan? What if all expedition members shared the greater values of safety and relationship instead of the success and recognition that accompanies climbing the world’s highest mountain? 

Or better yet, what if in the middle of the raging storm, the biting winds, and the whiteout conditions, the weary mountaineers were given an extra bottle of oxygen? A free, unconditional offer of warmth and shelter? A more excellent way? Do you think they’d take it? 

In a heartbeat. 

What about you? What if you were offered a more excellent way? In the midst of your most perfect marriage storm, what if you were offered a free, unconditional path of safety and security instead of teetering over the edge of the scary route you’re on? What if someone offered to lighten your load? A personal porter. Your own Sherpa to schlepp your stuff down the mountain. To show you a better way. A more excellent way. Would you choose it if you knew you wouldn’t have to go it alone?

Maybe you’re not in the middle of a marriage maelstrom; maybe you’re having a relaxing picnic on a beautiful peak somewhere. But whatever the condition of your marriage, we all need a more excellent way. As much as we’d like to think we could, you and I can’t live on the thin air of love alone. No matter how long you’ve been married—one week, one year, fifty years—no marriage lives on love alone. Of course, it sounds nice. Very romantic. Just like a mountaintop experience. A great vantage point where you can hold hands. Pop open a bottle of bubbly. But a mountaintop is no place to set up camp. We can visit the peaks, but we can’t stay. Life doesn’t work like that. 

We can’t camp on the peaks, because the weather conditions are always changing. Ask any Everest expedition. The truth of all marriages and all relationships is that they are filled with changing weather patterns. It is our choices, the choices of our spouses, and the ever-shifting circumstances encountered in day-to-day living that create and contribute to the ever-changing climatic conditions of our relationships. Marriage is a lot more than love alone, and it requires far more than you and I ever imagined when we first began the journey.

Contrary to popular thinking, love is not something you fall into or out of. True love is not an arbitrary impulse that hits us like a Tomahawk missile in the back of the head. Love is a choice, our choice and love is a lot of hard work. Unlike the weather, which you and I can’t control, love is a choice within our control. We can choose to love or we can choose not to. We can work at loving and becoming more loving in all of our relationships. Or choose not to. The weather reporter on Channel 7 can only predict. You get to decide. If you don’t want to work at love and make the choices necessary to improve the conditions in your marriage, this book is probably not for you. There. I said it. That’s my one condition: To develop a deeper love in your marriage, you have to be willing to work. (That includes your spouse. . . . I know what some of you are already thinking: I’m willing to work, but Immortal Beloved over here isn’t!)

But let’s be honest here. Who wants to work? Work’s not any fun! After all, if we’re really in love, shouldn’t our love just work? We’re soul mates, for crying out loud. We “complete” one another! If we have to work at love, maybe we’re not in love after all.

Well, we all want to be loved, but love is a lot of work. That’s where the rub comes in. Love is the reason we get hitched in the first place, isn’t it? (Except for when large amounts of money are involved.) Isn’t that the whole point? To live in love? To love another without condition? To look into the eyes of our beloved and whisper with everything in us, “I love you unconditionally”?

That’s precisely the point. And that’s precisely the problem. 

We are filled with love and our love is filled with conditions. Our love has more conditions than the Weather Channel’s national broadcast. Our love rises in the morning bright and cheery like sunny Southern California. By noon, it’s isolated clouds and a few scattered thundershowers over the Rockies. Then we drift into the overcast drab of Midwest melancholy at four. By the six o’clock news, we slide right into sleet and snow in the East. Then it’s off to bed with a huff and a grump.

Though unconditional love is our ideal, we’re not very good at it, to be honest. We are quite unpredictable in how we understand love, practice love, give love, and receive love. When Immortal Beloved acts less than lovely—okay, like a big fat jerk or jerkess—we change like the wind. We blow up like a volcano. Too much conflict and we begin to harden like a hailstone. We become bitter like acid rain. Our hearts begin to look a lot like, well, Seattle. 

And this is what gives unconditional love such a bad rap. It sounds so impossible. So unattainable. That’s because unconditional love is too often misunderstood as a conditional love with no limits. A love that knows no boundary or restriction. A love that puts up with anything or everything. A love that never has to change. People talk about unconditional love as if it is the sugary red and blue syrup we pour on snow cones. If I am just really sweet and pour my unconditional love all over my spouse, then all of our problems will melt away. Actually, no. Now you have a spouse with a purple tongue.

I am not advocating the dysfunctional understanding of unconditional love that is possessive, needy, clingy, controlling, or all-giving. Unconditional love has limits, borders, and boundaries. In regard to certain behaviors and choices, true unconditional love sets limits, and so should we. Unconditional love does not allow an abuser to keep abusing, a control freak to keep controlling, and an enabler to keep enabling. True unconditional love can and must say, “Stop it or else.” It can also say, “Wait. Not now. We’ll see. Let’s talk it over or let’s sleep on it.” Unconditional love is not a sentimental journey into wishful thinking; it comes from a power and source outside ourselves. Unconditional love is not living with Tunnel of Love tunnel vision; it enables us to keep our hearts wide open to new possibilities, options, choices, and discoveries.

Even in a perfect world, Eden, love had its limits. God told Adam and Eve that there was one thing they should know: Go enjoy everything I have created, but there’s one tree that’s off limits. That is my one condition. 

Even God has his one condition; love does have its limits. But Adam and Eve wanted nothing to do with God’s one condition. One fruit smoothie later, and we’re left with the rotten apples of conditional love. Now, though the goal may be unconditional love, every marriage has its conditions. Like the weather, some are good and some are bad. Certain important conditions are necessary to make a marriage grow and thrive. Like the weather report, conditions tell us how we’re doing and how we’re getting along. But unlike the weather, the conditions we create in our marriages are often dependent on our choices. Good choices create good conditions and a positive environment of growth and change. Poor choices can create increasingly unfavorable conditions that cause good marriages to go bad.

Our power to choose is what makes us distinctly human. This power comes from God. In our marriages, God sets before us the option of living with our conditional love or by the power of his unconditional love. In calling the people of Israel to choose the amazing, unconditional love of God, Moses put forth this challenge to the Israelites:

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life. Deuteronomy 30:19–20

God gave the people of Israel his law. It was a very long legal covenant detailing the very specific terms and conditions for the moral, religious, social, and political life of Israel. In the law, God outlined how the Israelites were to love and obey him by following his commandments. By loving and obeying God, the Israelites were promised abundant blessings. By breaking their covenant with God, the Israelites brought curses and captivity upon themselves. They had this thing for doing laps in the desert. 

Since the Israelites were unable to keep God’s law, God offered them a better way, a more excellent way. He promised the Israelites a Messiah, someone who would come not to do away with the law but to fulfill it with the law of love. The Messiah would come to bring all men and women—all marriages—back into relationship with God. Following God’s Son, Jesus Christ—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—was to be the new standard for walking in the most excellent way of love.

When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment in the law, he replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt:37–40).

Moses had the ten conditions, um, commandments. Jesus gave us a break and reduced it to two. I appreciate his willingness to work with me, but if I can’t keep the Ten Commandments, what makes me think I can keep the two commandments? Those two commandments are a bit all-encompassing, aren’t they? If I’m to love God and love my neighbor as myself, which I’m almost positive includes my wife, Krista, I’m going to need something more than my conditional love. I don’t know about you, but I can’t do it on my own power. Fortunately, there is a more excellent way: following the Way. 

Before Jesus left this earth, he promised he would not leave you and me alone. He promised to leave us with a Counselor, Comforter, and Friend. He promised us his Holy Spirit, the most experienced “love guide” we could ever ask for. Better than the most experienced Everest expedition guide—and God isn’t charging sixty-five thousand dollars a head for a million-dollar view of his world.

The Holy Spirit promises to guide you in the most excellent way of love. Through the highest highs and lowest lows. Through the laughter and through the looney bin. Through the messy, mucky, mundane world that every marriage goes through. By following the more excellent way of the Spirit, you will be able to overcome the most difficult marriage storms and experience new possibilities for the weather patterns of your most persistent problems. As you keep in step with the Spirit, you will discover that he has the power to change your heart and your marriage. Whether you are walking on the peak or through the valley right now, the Holy Spirit will give you the power to make choices that can actually change the condition of your heart and the conditions you create in your marriage. 

And as you navigate your way through the pages of this book, you’ll discover we are going to travel through the valleys before we get to the peaks, which I trust makes this a very unconventional marriage book. 

Part 1 is written for us to talk about the nature of unconditional love—its meaning in valleys where we live and work and what makes it so difficult to keep choosing love through the trials of everyday living. Part 2 gets more specific, providing anchors to be set for the climb ahead and offering you the more excellent pathway of 1 Corinthians 13. If our marriages are going to be filled with conditions, these are the conditions that we want to live by. The greatest words ever written on love are found in this famous chapter, and by choosing to live by these conditions, your heart will not only find safety but hopefully get in the best condition it’s ever been in.

Will you take this most excellent way of love? Let’s step out of the storm and follow God’s lead. Let’s get off this peak and journey to the valley below.

The valley is where the oxygen is thick and plentiful.

It’s where you and I were made to live.