Who says you’re in a valley!

This past month, in one of our roundtables, we had an opportunity to tell our personal life stories. In this process, you map out high points and low points looking back over your life. One of the things people commonly reference when doing this exercise is that it’s in the “valleys” that they grow most in their personal relationship with Christ. Yes, it tends to be at those points where we’re going through difficult circumstances that we look to Christ for comfort and tend to really focus on this relationship. Many acknowledge a challenge when they mistakenly shift their attention away from this relationship during the high points in their journey.

One of my favorite speeches to give is “turning points”. While it’s adapted for the particular audience, it centers around defining moments in our lives. Generally, throughout the message, I make reference to the fact that “one play can change the game”. However, for this to happen, we must stay in the game. Yes, I’ve heard numerous stories of people who persevere to the point of experiencing a “game changer” that totally redirects their path. If you’d like to read one of these types of speeches, I encourage you to reference my prior blog, Turning Points.

So, Lisa, my wife, recently was reflecting on life’s circumstances. It’s no secret that while we do “ok” financially, we’ve traded our life of chasing wealth for seeking and doing God’s will. Thus, if we allow ourselves to focus on the finances, we sometime can feel as though we’re in a valley or going through a desert experience. Finding herself in a “valley” experience, she recently was in her prayer time and heard God say, “who says you’re in a valley!” As he often does, God caused Lisa to focus on the blessings we have in life. We have a wonderful family, all in good health, a superior husband/wife relationship, never worry about putting food on the table or shelter over our heads, and “financially” are still among the world’s wealthiest people. So, “who says you’re in a valley!” I would add to this that we have a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility in our lifestyle that we didn’t experience in the first 20 years of our marriage.

Yes, reflecting back on the exercise and Lisa’s experience, I often find that people realize it’s all a matter of prospective. Many tend to flip their high/low graphs over when looking through the lens of Christ and God’s will. What used to be low points are now the high points in our lives.

Well, today being my birthday, Lisa and I used our freedom and flexibility to spend a few hours at the park having a picnic and resting in a grassy knoll (maybe not the best grassy knoll). As we were reflecting on her recent encounter with God asking “who says you’re in a valley”, Lisa said: “this isn’t a valley, it’s simply a walk in the park!” Yes, we are experiencing “a walk in the park” when you truly look at it.

Wow, I love this woman and am so happy to have her in the journey with me! While I’ve witnessed many unfortunate situations with husbands and wives not having the same perspective of the “valley” times, I am blessed not to have to worry about that with my partner in life. Thanks babe!