If you've been around this life for more than a few decades, you'll have your share of valleys. Peaks and valleys, for sure, but let's just talk about valleys today. Especially those valleys that you don't know are coming. Let's face it, who does know?
The problem with the valleys is not that they exist; we'd be fooling ourselves if we thought we wouldn't hit life's lows. Yes, the problem is not in their inevitability, but in their duration. Just around the river bend? Just around the corner? Light at the end of the tunnel? Don't even know I'm in the river. Can't even see the tunnel, let alone some mythical place where light might shine again.
When you're mired in a slump or in the depths of grief, depression, or despair, there's no corner in sight. No river about to turn. No sun about to shine. I'm not talking about clinical depression. That's another matter entirely and one on which I'm ill-equipped to advise. I'm talking about the valley that comes when you lose your job (as I did) or your spouse or you realize your marriage is over or you get burned by a friend that you trusted with your deepest darkest secrets. The valley is wide and the valley is deep. The chasm is filled with turmoil and frustration, self-doubt, self-pity, and rivers of tears.
How much of the valley's burden would be lifted if you only knew when the timer was up? How low could you go if you knew you would definitely be able to get up pretty soon?
A good friend whose marriage ended told me that she hadn't expected her grief to be as lasting and deep as it was. She's bright, kind, capable, loving, energetic. Having what she held to be true proven very false, threw her for a loop. A lasting loop. If she knew going in - hey here's the deal - you're going to be so distraught, so angry, so depressed, so hurt, so why-me for about ninety days.....then on day ninety-one, poof, you're all good; she could have navigated days 1 and 23 and 45 and 58. Day 91 is coming. You can count down. You can hold your breath and tread water for that long, surely. Wouldn't that be the trick?
When I lost my job, I went from shock (but yet, not awe), to disbelief, to anger, to can't I just roll back the clock and try that again? A little bump would send me reeling. I probably cried more in the first few weeks than when both of my parents died. Seriously. That hurts to write, but it's true. If I could only tell when I would turn the corner, turn the page on it all, I could make it. I could navigate the valley.
As my father used to say, though, you don't know what you don't know. When life throws us a curve ball, we swing and miss. We don't know what's going to happen next. Are we going to strike out? Are we going to get hit by the next pitch? Is the coach going to pull us from the game? Is everyone in the dugout thinking - why is this person even batting right now? Are the fans booing or cheering or does my name just rhyme with boo? Are we ever ever ever ever going to make it to first base?
So much noise. So much energy wasted on what everyone else thinks is going on. So much energy wasted on what everyone else thinks period. So much self recrimination and self loathing. It's not them, it's me. The world is out to get me. I shouldn't be up to bat. I am a failure. I can't do anything right. Nobody is every going to love me. Life isn't fair. Why don't I ever get the game winning hit in the bottom of the ninth inning?
There are times when you are in the valley when you forget you were ever on a hill. Crying seems more ordinary than smiling or even mouth set in a straight line. The slightest thing can make you go batty. Agh - I'm a failure. Agh - I can't do anything right. Agh- nobody is ever going to love me. Agh - any criticism anyone has ever wagged in my direction is true.
Then you simply step back and take a deep breath. Take one deep breath. Take one deep breath and quiet the noise in your head and the voice that says you are not enough and you are not up to the task.
The sun comes up. The earth turns. The hurt is a little dulled. Something arbitrary makes you smile. The pain doesn't cut through you like a knife. A better day seems possible. You make a mistake and you don't fall apart. You trust someone with a little bit of your soul and it doesn't get shredded. If you'd only known at the beginning, that there would be an end to the misery. Ah,there's the rub. When you are low and feeling defeated, you do not know. You never know when it's going to end.
There is just one thing.
That one thing is you.
You have to get yourself out of it. You have to choose not to wallow. You have to choose to turn the page. You have to listen to friends who love you. You have to have faith. When you're feeling that the low is as low as it's going to go and there is no end in sight, do not do it. Do not succumb to the exquisite pleasure of hiding under your blanket in a dark room. Do not succumb to 'the world is out to get me'. Do not blame your valley on someone else's peak.
Guess what? Doesn't help. It's only you. It's only you and it does get better. I can't promise you when it will end. I can't say when the lows will ebb and the pain will recede.
I can only promise you that it does.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill made low
The crooked straight
And the rough places plain
--Isaiah 40:4
--Handel's Messiah
--but really Isaiah 40:4
Exalt in your valley and what you learn from what's it like in there.
Then make that rough place plain.
