The Valley of Transition

You always wonder how you get there.  The valley.  It can seem like you were just walking along, not anywhere too low or too high, just walking along, and then you look around and notice that somehow you have stumbled into a valley.  The mountain walls are tall all around you.  The air is colder and there is less sunlight and you are probably alone here.  The valley is not usually a place you visit with a group, or even one other person. Its can be a lonely, cool, shadowy place.  

But I’ve been here before.  And I know I’ll come again.  Different circumstances have brought me here before.  Sin I needed to deal with, relationships that were ending, maybe the death of a loved one.  Or times when it wasn’t so big, a friend moving away, a bad grade in a class… whatever has brought me here, it is not a place I do not recognize.  And so I no longer panic when I turn and see the familiar terrain.  The lonely places, the shelters to hid from the wind, the stream that runs the center, the trees that have found deep roots.  

The one thing I know for sure is that I am not alone here, God always shows up here.  That is the thing about the valley.  It’s full of burning bushes and manna from heaven.  The valley is the place that God calls us when he wants to get us alone.  He has something to say to me, say to you, all alone.  Like a secret intimate language between just the two of you.  A calling, a next chapter, an ending.  

I have loved this chapter in my life with all of my heart.  I have loved and served here for 15 years.  I’m at the age when that doesn’t seem too long, or long enough.  I didn’t think that I would ever give this up.  I thought I would hold onto this chapter for decades more.  I was not tired of loving it or serving or taking care of it.  I did not feel done.  Yet, I could hear God calling me to let it go.  I didn’t listen at first.  And the last year was me fighting to make something work that just was not going to.  I poured my heart in, more lonely than ever, sitting at the valley entrance but not willing to go in, sure that I didn’t need to.  But as 2021 opened, I knew the small soft whispers of God to have me let go were clear.  And to walk forward into the valley.  I have felt mad and sad and confused.  I can feel God’s words calling me, yet I can be distracted by the pain of others way of handling it.  It’s easy to take the bait and want to be mad at others for their reaction or lack of.  But it’s a distraction.  Keep your eyes on Jesus.  Even with your eyes closed and you barely breathing, keep the eyes of your heart locked on him.  Stand so still and listen so hard…  Can you hear him walking in the cool of the day?  Come out from your leaf coverings.  He knows all.  This valley is not lonely if you let it in.  If you embrace this time.  The valley of transition.  

I know that I will not leave the same person.  There are things God will tell me, ways he will change me.  It will all be him if I let him work his way.  If I don’t flail and toss my head, fighting what he is trying to grow in me.  Accepting the seeds he plants, allowing him to till the soil of my heart, put new callings in and remove the old roots.  

You are my heart’s desire from first to last

Like as the hart desires the water brooks

So longs my soul toward you.  So I thirst

For living streams, not for the dusty books

They write about you, not he empty words

That ring from pulpits, nor the haughty looks

Of those who market you.  These are the shards

Of broken idols.  I long for the deep

In you that calls the deep in me, the chords

That sound those depths and summon me to weep

At first with tears of grief and then with tears

Of joy, that I may how those tears and reap

A timeless harvest, that the ripened ears 

Of grain may shine as clean and clear as gold

Shucked of the husk of all my wasted years.

(From David’s Crown by Malcolm Guite available on Amazon)