Recently the question of “what places call your heart?” was posed to me during one of our spiritual formation classes with Mary. Almost immediately I thought of two of my favorite places in the whole world: Windy Gap and Crooked Creek Ranch. Two Younglife camps that I have spent so much time at, whether through weekend wrangling or summer staff, or being a camper there myself.
Two of my favorite places in the world, both of which happen to be found in the valley. The places where I feel peace, contentment, and the deepest joy. And yet the contrast of the valley and that they’re the ‘low places’.
The valley is always for some reason connected to sorrow, to darkness, bleakness. But it’s so much more than that. There is magic in the mountaintops, for sure, but the abundance is found in the valley; it’s where life grows, where rivers, and the living water itself, runs. These places of the ordinary and the everyday are the places where God dwells and where we grow.
Why do I dread the valley? Why do I try to run from it, out of it?
Growth always is in the places we think we don’t want to go, where we don’t want to be.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Windy Gap and Crooked Creek are in the valley. That I can see the majesty of the mountains from these low places, but can still see the abundance and beauty that is all around me, right where I am. No need to get to a better, higher spot- to do more in order to see it.
I was inspired by Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts (one of my favorites, pls read it) for Lent this year: to write down each and every small and little and seemingly insignificant gift that the Lord has given me each day. I’ve done it before, and each time I’m left with a better perspective and appreciation for the life i’ve been given- this time being no different. I never saw the valley as a place I wanted to be until recently. She writes in her book “We don’t need to change what we see, but how we see it”. And how much different, how much better, have just these two weeks been changing the way I see where I am.
Abundance and life and growth is in the valley. Contentment is in the valley. Help me to remember, Lord, that the valley is not a bad place to be. That you are there in it, making all things new.
- Jen
monthly music recommendations: secret language by the shivers, high by miley cyrus, polarbear! by strawberry milk cult, red by jaguar sun, freeze by wakey!wakey!, if the sun stops shining by damien jurado, someday by glorietta