Month: June 2015

The Other Side of the Valley of Baca

Do you feel like you are wandering through a desert with nothing but sand to see in every direction? I’ve felt at various times in my life like I was in a desert, but those deserts were nothing in comparison to the Valley of Baca I have traveled through this past year.

I’m sure we have all seen at least one movie in which someone is stranded in a desert, trudging through the sand, thirsty, sunburned, so desperate for water and shade that they sometimes see a mirage with a pool of cool, clear water in the shade of some palms.

Psalm 84 talks of one of these deserts called the Valley of Baca. When I googled Baca I found a variety of definitions. One definition describes love, another defines Baca as a specific type of tree, but the most common definition of Baca is a desert known as the Valley of Weeping. Many historians believe travelers on their way to the Feast of Tabernacle would often have no choice but to travel through the Valley of Baca. It is thought that the travelers would often dig a hole in the hopes it would fill with ground water. If that didn’t happen, the hole would be left with the hope that it would fill with rain water that the next weary traveler could drink.

Do you feel like you are in Baca right now? Do you feel like you are wandering through a desert with nothing but sand to see in every direction? I’ve felt at various times in my life like I was in a desert, but those deserts were nothing in comparison to the Valley of Baca I have traveled through this past year.

In these last few months, I have longed for peace and comfort. I have experienced moments of peace in which the hole I dug had filled with water and other moments when I found a hole dug by another traveler that had filled with life-sustaining water through rain. I have walked. I have crawled. I have fallen and rolled down the giant sand dunes like I have seen in movies. I have even been carried through portions of my Valley of Baca. I have cried, I have prayed, I have begged, and I have praised. I have trudged up one sand dune hoping to see a luscious, green valley on the other side, just to drop to my knees and cry when I reach the top and see nothing but sand in all directions on the other side. I have often longed for God to pick me up and hold me in His lap like a child and comfort and protect me.

In Psalm 84:5-9 the Psalmist wrote, “Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.  As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make a spring; the rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.”

I am here to tell you that I have traveled through Baca and I can see the other side. I am not quite to that beautiful, green grass, but I can almost feel it between my toes. If you are in your own Valley of Baca, don’t give up. Keep going. Dig a hole for water. If you are too tired to dig, find a hole some other traveler has left for you. If you can’t walk any more right now on your own, find another traveler to help you. Keep moving.

“How lovely is Your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young – even Your alters, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; they will still be praising You….For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand.  I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You” (Psalm 84:1-4,10-12).

Cry out to God and focus on Him. If all you can see right now when you look around you is Baca and God, you have all you need. God carried me through Baca, and He will do the same for you if you will just ask.

Stop Trying to Understand

“I just don’t understand how they could do this to me.” I have heard this said so many times over the years and recently have said it myself several times. When someone you have loved for many years decides to act in a way that destroys the relationship you have with him or her, the pain you feel can overwhelm you and trigger a multitude of feelings and questions. You may feel like I recently did: stuck in a pit of quicksand, slipping a little deeper every time I tried to answer another “how could he” question. As much as I would like to know the answers to each of the questions I think of, I have decided it may be best if I don’t understand them and can never answer them. Isaiah 55:3,6-9 says, “Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life….Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously. ‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.  For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts….'” Nowhere in this passage does God instruct us to study so we may understand the thoughts and actions of other people. Nowhere does He say we will understand what other people do or why they do it. What He does tell us is that we need to listen to Him and study His ways. The more we understand God’s ways, the less we will understand the ways of man including the men or women who hurt us. Stop trying to understand how someone you love could do something that hurts you deeply. If you understand it, you are capable of doing it yourself. You are almost always better off not understanding it and not being capable of it. This is almost always the only way out of the quicksand. 

New Happiness Despite Old Circumstances

If someone had told me a year ago that I would be where I am today, I would have told them they were crazy. Not only would I have never allowed things to spin this far out of control, I would never have been able to survive as things are now.

If someone had told me six months ago that everything that my life was would be gone in three months, I would have told them they were as wrong as wrong could be.

If someone had told me three months ago that I would soon be happier than I had been in over two decades, I would have told them they had no idea what they were talking about and obviously didn’t know me very well. At that time I was too devestated to really, truly function or see any possibility of happiness in my future.

Guess what. In each of these instances I would have been the one who was wrong. When I look back on the multitude of major changes that have taken place during this difficult time in my life, I visualize a big box that my life was carefully packed away in. Some of my life was packed neatly and organized and some was simply thrown into the box with the rest. Regardless of how or when it was placed in the box, each item was very valuable to me. Once my whole life was packed away to keep it safe, someone snatched the box from the place l had hidden it for safety.  They flipped it upside down and shook until the entire box, my life, was empty, handed that empty box to me, stomped on much of the contents and then smugly walked away.

I felt lost at first, frozen and unable to think. After some time had passed, I knelt down on the floor and began to try to put everything back in the box, but the box seemed much smaller now. After a while I realized that the broken pieces of my life wouldn’t fit in the box any more. I had a difficult time fitting everything in the box before it was dumped and was now faced with the task of trying to shove every broken piece, big or small, into a space never made to hold so much. It couldn’t be done.

With tears flowing down my face, I removed each broken piece of my life and spread them neatly around the floor beside the box. I gazed upon them and mourned my losses. How could I continue without these pieces of my life whether they were whole or broken? I tried desperately to find a way to glue the shattered pieces back together. I insisted I would succeed, but after a while I realized I was lying to myself. No amount of glue or tape could ever fix these shattered pieces and make them whole again, and they could not fit back into the box I held no matter how I tried. I didn’t know what to do.

I knew I couldn’t go on without these pieces but they couldn’t be fixed. I cried and I cried…a lot, and then I began to pack the unbroken items back into the box. Even these unbroken pieces were marred in some way by scratches, bruises, dents or cracks, but they were still intact despite their scars. As I placed the last of the unbroken pieces of my life into the box, I saw something through the tears welled up in my eyes. My box was full and not because it was smaller. My box had grown in size and the scarred but unbroken pieces of my life that now resided in this box had grown, too. 

The box I packed my life into was completely full and it no longer seemed like anything was missing. The shattered pieces on the floor around me were no longer important. I had thought for over two decades that each item I had packed away was extremely important and irreplaceable. I had packed each of my precious “belongings” away to protect them, but all that I had really accomplished was to hold on to them for two decades longer than God wanted me to. These things had no real value and actually lowered the value of the other pieces of my life.

My life outside of my imaginary box has changed considerably. Some of the changes were painful to live through but each and every one of them was needed and has brought me to a new place in my life…a new place where I feel respected, wanted and loved.

Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”

I thought I would not survive the complete change my life has been through; but, as it says in Isaiah 43:2, I did not drown or burn. I made it and I am happy for the first time in many, many years.