Hilly reflections
I’m sure you are familiar with hills - or you’ve at least heard of them, maybe seen pictures of them. Do me a favor and picture them, see them in your mind’s eye for a moment.
Those earthy-sandy-stony mounds; landmarks that have high points and low points, going up and down and up and down with very few flat spaces in between.
Maybe you’ve walked those hilly roads, up the peaks and down in the valleys, and you know the exhilarating feeling you get when you reach the top, even after trekking through the deepest of valleys.
Do you have a picture now?
Ok, now picture your life.
The ups, the downs, the peaks, the valleys, the in-betweens - and overlay it with your picture of those hills.
Remember the treks through the deepest and darkest moments that life has presented to you? The unknowns, the uncertainty, the difficult hikes up and the unsettling trips down, where it feels like you and the world around you is rolling down like a snowball and unraveling before your very eyes? At best, the way down is a tumble, a stumble, a trip, and a flip. By the time you reach the bottom, you may feel bruised, battered, broken. And as you lift your head and look up at the upward slope before you, more towering than the last, you feel like collapsing in a heap and never getting up again.
But, but - what about the peak?
What about the view at the crest of that mountain, the exhilarating feeling you get when you reach the top, even after trekking through the lowest of valleys? That breakthrough, that moment where the pain all made sense and the hike up became worth it and the roll down was no longer as scary because you knew that the peak would come once again?
Dearest, the highest highs are worth living through the lowest lows for. It’s in walking the valley that we can sit in the beauty of the breakthrough, that we can watch the sunrise from the top and tumble a little less down the other side - because the breakthrough is grounding. It’s healing. It’s oh so worth it.
It’s in walking the valley that we can sit in the beauty of the breakthrough...because the breakthrough is grounding. It’s healing. It’s oh so worth it.
And if you find yourself as a little heap at the bottom of the hill?
That hill does not define you. That fall does not make you. That tumble is not you. The ups and downs may make up our lives, but they don’t make us. They may bend us, but they don’t have to break us. Instead, these ups and downs can remind us that we need the One that made us, the One that holds us together, and the One that reminds us that we are of infinite worth regardless of our lived experiences. Because “...though [we] walk through the valley of the shadow of death, [we] will fear no evil; For You are with [us]”*
For He is with us. He is with me and He is with you. Therefore, we need not fear the valleys - and in living fearlessly we can live the journey, the hike, and the peak more joyfully.
Joyfully yours,
Bel
*Psalms 23:4a
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