I’m coming out of an experience a couple of weeks ago that was a “mountain top” experience. It was an overwhelming picture of God’s glory, salvation, power, tenderness… being experienced in the life in his people. Mountain top experiences are beautiful gifts from a God who delights in giving us small glimpses of heaven. Not only do they immerse us deeply in joy, consolation and amazement, but they are also a moment of vision and clear-sightedness where for a few moments we might say, “oh, woah… so this is who you are, and this is what you’re doing!” I believe he protects us by the fact that these heightened experiences are brief glimpses, but my experience is we can live off the vision for a long time afterwards through staying close to the Lord in prayer and memory.
The largest proportion of our lives, though, is lived in the valleys. For the most part, when and if a mountain-top comes along, it is not expected and arrests us somewhat. But valleys are different. Valleys are expected and presumed. Sometimes they are pleasant and green. Sometimes they are darker, enveloped in shadow.
Friends, today I want to talk valleys. There was a particular valley I came out of recently – one that preceded the mountain top. It taught me so much – about God, about valleys, and about mountain tops themselves.
The first thing is – I knew this particular valley was coming. I knew it would be a season of living in the land of inexperience, largely outside my comfort zone, in some ways alone. Coming out of the Christmas holidays, the valley that faced me looked like a gruelling, dark, deeply shadowed, swampy valley – with an abundance of midges. The thing is, I don’t take on dark valleys very lightly. I am quite a big complainer. Tough seasons are marked by a lot of wrestling with God. So, God and I wrestled our way into 2019. My prayer was: I don’t want just to survive this season, Lord. Yes, I can do endurance, but I am your daughter, and I believe you want more for me. I don’t want to see you as a ‘task-master’; I want to know you as you are – my Creator who delights over me.
Yep; I am pretty exacting with God… 😉
I learnt there’s a lot I could do to manage my own valley season. I realised I needed to put a few “self-care-stepping-stones” in place to optimise my emotional and spiritual resilience. This looks different for every person (obviously, if you are a mum with lots of kids, your building in resilience is going to look quite different from mine!). But for me, I knew I needed to do more than maintain my normal routine; I needed to increase it. This may seem mad, but believe me, it worked. It worked spiritually: against all common sense, I took a retreat day in the lead up to this major event: for a whole 24 hours, my phone went on airplane mode, and through silence, nature, sacraments and scripture, the Lord deeply strengthened me. It worked physically: I increased by normal one run a week to two runs a week, and, with this amazing podcast, these runs themselves became moments of grace. And I was vigilant about scheduling uninterruptible and life-giving times with friends and family during this time, and cutting out any appointment that was not completely necessary.
I have to tell you, the whole time I walked through that valley, Jesus surpassed my expectations. Of course, by the nature of valleys, there will always be unexpected crises, tiredness, unrelenting workloads, but I learnt there can also be light: with the Lord I discovered beautiful intimacy, love, laughter and even miracles.
It taught me about God: that generally he won’t remove the valleys from the paths we have to walk, but that he will embrace us each step of the way through them, and that his power is always greater than the darkness.
It taught me about valleys: they are temporary; they don’t have the final word; God is so good that he longs to light them up for us if only we ask him.
And it taught me about mountain-tops: yes, they are reality; the vision at the top is true — but we have a long journey ahead of us before we are ready to bear it being all our reality.
If you are in a swampy, valley season… Reach out to the Lord with something like the prayer above. Let’s not give in to the expectation that it is going to be one gruelling marathon. Step out in faith knowing that Jesus can and will transform and resurrect the dark places in our lives – beyond our expectations.
Thanks, Hannah. Good to have this stuff articulated and out there.