God of the Hills and Valleys
Have you ever known a song that just says it all? One that you feel like someone was reading your mind and heart to know just where you are? There is a song like that for me. As my family gratefully comes out of a valley and sits for this moment on a hill, Tauren Wells sings a song called Hills and Valleys that expresses my heart exactly. I have walked the valleys, and although I feel like I may be on a mountaintop right now, I know that I have never been alone, nor have I arrived by myself.
My family and I spent a couple of years in a valley. There was a difficult move and some family issues. But the hardest part was losing my mom in September of 2016. As my dad had passed many years ago, I felt very alone. Then, as soon as we had closed her estate I then discovered in May 2017, that I had cancer. In June my best friend from childhood was senselessly killed in an accident – even as I began the fight for my own life. Throughout that summer we then walked through treatments of radiation and chemo therapies. Ultimately, I then had 2 surgeries in October. Complications from the first required a 2nd which left my body permanently altered. You might be able to see that it was not an easy time.
But I am so thankful for the God of the Valleys. We were never alone. I saw His Church, His Body, literally, in the care that we received through all this. His eyes saw His child. His hands prepared meals and gifts. I saw His feet in those who came to visit. I saw His imagination and His heart in the art that was made for and given to us. It was not always easy to see, I had to lift my eyes to look for it, but it was there.
This year I am so grateful to be able to say that He is also God of the Hills. First of all, I am cancer-free and my health has returned. My husband and I are doing well in our jobs and looking at some small promotions there. On top of all that, we have been able to purchase a home of our own. My daughter will be starting high school in a good place and this was a long-awaited answer to a couple of prayers actually. Miraculously, my son has also found an agency to work with him in our new but small town. His placement was one of the things I could not see as we made this move. But I felt God was telling me, “It’s okay, I got this.” We made our move without seeing what this was going to look like. As it turns out, our new neighbors across the street work for the agency that provides just such service here. The answer to this prayer was literally within eyesight of our new home! None of this was our doing. Not by ourselves. It was the God of the Hills.
It is so hard, in the valleys to not feel alone. It can also be easy on the mountaintops to think that you got there by yourself. The experiences of the these last few years have shown me that neither is true. We can be guilty of believing that He is the god of either the hills or the valleys alone, but not the other. Or maybe not believing He is god of neither.
Psalms 50:15 says: “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” We can also read in I Peter 5:8 “Humble yourselves under the mighty power of God. and at the right time, He will lift you up in honor.”
He wants to be the God of our valleys and the God of our hills. Please let Him.
