Last week was Thanksgiving. The one day a year you pretty much have to be thankful. You can't avoid it and I think for most of us, we appreciate a day where you can just pause and really focus on all the blessings in our lives. It's tricky though because the world also tells you that it should be a perfect day of watching parades and football game after football game, where all of your family lovingly sits around the table and eats the food that someone cheerfully prepared after giving an inspiring prayer then pies and naps for everyone. But seriously, who's Thanksgiving day actually turns out like that?!
This year my husband and I got in a huge fight, my boys were particularly crazy because it had been rainy and they'd been cooped up inside. I forgot one of the ingredients to one of the casseroles so we had to make another trip to Wal-Mart. We didn't host this year so we went to my in-laws and my sister's home back to back. All of our parents are divorced so there's usually an inevitable awkwardness. I cried in the bathroom as soon as I got to my-laws house and promptly told God I wasn't going to be thankful today and no one could make me. Obviously my day was ruined!
Some of this overreaction was hormones but some of it was true feelings like all the praying, studying the Bible, listening to sermons, going to bible studies, and obeying God just didn't matter. I have humbly prayed. I've boldly prayed. I've waited and still I hear nothing. It was so hard to be thankful on the most thankful day of the whole year. It wasn't Thanksgiving, it was Thanks-going because all of my thankfulness was gone.
That night I had a dream...
My husband, my three boys and I were on a four wheeler going very fast near the edge of a cliff. I didn't feel scared though, like being in a roller coaster. It's terrifying and safe all at once. We went around this cliff for a ways, almost falling off several times. Then I was lifted off the four wheeler and I was floating in the air. I was over a valley. It looked very long and deep. There was no way you could have climbed out of it. Some parts seemed awful, burned up like in a volcano, dead, dry and dark. Other parts didn't seem as intimidating. There was green, bushy terrain, some rocks but definitely alive. It was narrow and steep all the way down the entire valley. As I was hovering over it, just like you fly over the city at the beginning of an Omni movie, I felt God say to me "Look at all of this you've walked through." After what felt like a few miles, we came to the end of the valley which truly was a shorter distance than what I thought when we began. There was water as far as I could see. And white pebbles, not sand but still smooth and beautiful. There were people further down the shoreline playing. Immediately I saw Seth, my youngest son and then I saw Levi, my middle son who was looking back into the valley but careful not to step back on it. I turned back towards the ocean; it was breathtaking and calm. All I felt was the deepest, most unimaginable peace. And God asked me in that moment, " Look at this Promised Land! Would you have pressed on if you knew how close you were? Is it not worth it?"
See, parts of our valleys are terrible, broken, scary, dry places and we wonder how we'll ever survive them, but other parts of our valleys, the parts that frighten me the most, are the ordinary, "normal" sections that seem livable, tolerable, and maybe like you could handle them all on your own. These places are completely void of true life. I know I need Jesus but the phases that make me think I don't need Jesus scare me the most. That's where I get stuck, where I think I can pitch a tent and stay a while, maybe forever. Truthfully, as I hovered over that valley of mine, there was no way out and even if I could have there was nothing outside of it. Just emptiness. The only way to your promised land is through the valley. Listening to the voice of our Guide who knows the way out and directs our steps. He never leaves us or forsakes us. Sometimes we believe because the valley seems dark and never ending, or because I want more than the next step or maybe I just want to go my own way, or heaven forbid, just quit. We think we can't trust Him, that He's left us or that the promised land won't be all it's cracked up to be anyways.
But friend, it is! The complete relief I felt was like nothing I have ever known or could even imagine this side of heaven. The world weighs us down with expectations that we'll never meet and its exhausting striving towards them. The promised land in my dream was exactly how I imagine heaven. Filled with glorious love, the beauty of the Lord, our eternal glory which we hope for every step of our dreadful valleys. Don't quit, don't get stuck, and sweet friend, please don't stop trusting Him. Whatever your "promised land" is, run towards it fiercely. It's closer than it seems and it's absolutely worth it.
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