Life has a funny way of moving in directions you never intended, or could have imagined from a younger, more naive perspective. When I was a little girl I had mapped out in my mind what my life would look like…the model family, how I would meet the man of my dreams in college and marry him at 23, have 2 kids by the time I was 27, have a nice house and comfortable existence in a place where I would settle down and stay for the rest of my life, growing old with my husband, children, grandchildren and good, lifelong friends nearby.
Things haven’t worked out quite that way. As a young girl I watched my father descend into the grip of alcoholism until he left us when I was 12. I saw my mother struggle to hold her heart and our family together. By the time I was 25 I been through a series of my own bad relationships and painful break-ups that left me feeling somehow “less than”. While I met the man of my dreams at 26 and was married at 27, I spent the first three years of our marriage in a state of suicidal depression and illness due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. Against all odds I had one child a few years later, then could not have the others I longed for. I have moved 9 times in the past 15 years, between three states and 6 cities. I have experienced financial peace as well as the stress than comes from wondering where the next meal will come from. I have experienced a ripping apart of the marriages of dear friends and family. I have walked with my husband through debilitating injury. I have known the pain of needless, severed friendships. I have cried an ocean of tears.
Much of my life has been spent in what my sister refers to as the “shadowed lands”–a place of darkness that presses in overwhelmingly…a sense of hopeless “forgottenness” and wandering. The type of aloneness that goes far beyond my general melancholy nature.
Those have been the times, however, that I have grown the most as a person. The times that I have gained wisdom and maturity that comes from long periods of pain and loss and questioning. The times that God has gotten my attention and has caused me to press into Him. The times that He has come to my rescue, around the bend, through the mist. If it weren’t for the place of deep need and darkness, I would never be in a place to discover again that Jesus is the only One who can bring the light and meet my need.
Hannah Whitall Smith says that “the valley is the place of vision.” I see that now, and know that when I have come out of the shadowed lands, my eyes are clearer–the sun is brighter, the meadow greener, the sky bluer than I remembered. And there is hope that no matter the circumstance–my God is mighty to save and I am never forgotten.
