For those of you who don’t already know this, I’m a Christian. I’m really open about that. I also work part-time at my church as a youth director. Part of my job is to fill in for our pastor occasionally with preaching duties. Recently I preached a sermon on what God does for us when we’re in a spiritual or emotional valley. It got a pretty good response, so I thought I would share it here. Hope you get something from it.

Sarah can tell you I know a little more about the TV show Friends than is probably healthy. My students, too. I can’t count the number of times I’ve used an event or a line from that show to illustrate something I’m trying to get across in class. If you watch the show, one of the ongoing conflicts is the on again/off again relationship between Ross and Rachel. Well, in one episode, someone asks Rachel how she’s doing and her response just really spoke to me. She said, “It’s like there’s rock bottom, fifty yards of crap, and me.” Can’t we all remember times in our lives where we felt exactly like that? If you’ve never had at least one fifty yards of crap moment in your life, I’m not sure how to even talk to you.

I apologize in advance if you’ve already heard this story, or at least some parts of it, by now, but my deepest, most abject moment came about seven or eight years ago. My marriage, which had been on life support for many years, was finally officially over after 28 years. I was living with my parents. At age 50+, I was living in a room in my parents’ house, feeling like a complete failure. And I don’t mean a mostly failure. I mean completely and in every possible way, the worst person on the face of the earth. I, who had smugly looked down my nose at people whose marriages broke up, was divorced. Every good thing I’d ever done was negated by this sin that surely felt mortal. I absolutely hated myself. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I didn’t stop going to work, but I was a zombie, despite thinking I was keeping up appearances. That was the rock bottom part. To my surprise, I hadn’t even started into the fifty yards of crap part.

That began when my mom started forgetting she was cooking dinner in the middle of a meal and let it burn, or couldn’t remember how to cook something she’d made literally hundreds of times. And then she started forgetting the names of people she’d known for years. One of the hardest parts, for her and for us, was when she realized she couldn’t remember how to crochet anymore. My mom could crochet in her sleep. Every member of our family and every significant other had received one or more afghans, toboggans, and scarves from her. She’d made doll clothes, tablecloths, and more doilies than there are stars in the sky. And suddenly, her brain lost the ability to tell her hands what to do. But even worse was the period when, despite her protestations, we could see the look in her eyes that showed she knew. She knew something was wrong and that it wasn’t going to get better. She fought against it, claiming she was fine, cried when anyone suggested she maybe should let one of us cook dinner or maybe Dad should take her to the store instead of driving herself.

Things started their steepest descent one morning when I got up for work. Normally, Mom and Dad were still in bed by the time I left, but not this morning. Mom had been having a really bad pain in the side of her head all night and it kept them both up. I didn’t really think that much about it because, well, I was living my whole life on autopilot. But that changed right after school when my cell rang. It was dad. Mom had been napping for too long, so he checked on her. She couldn’t get up. It was like half her body was dead. Her speech was slurred and she wasn’t making sense, even by her standards at the time. She was having a stroke. The ambulance was taking her to Camden Clark, I was on my way out of the building anyway, so I told my dad I was on my way and tried to pray as I dashed out the door to my car. But all I could say was, “God, I don’t even know what to pray for right now. If the stroke kills her, it will surely crush us all but her suffering will be cut short. If she recovers from the stroke, the best she could hope for was that she wouldn’t be worse.

Long story a little bit shorter, she recovered from the stroke. But it immediately drove her farther down the road of dementia. This was right before Christmas. My absolute lowest point came at the end of the last day of school before break. School was my sanctuary. While I was there, I was surrounded by kids and I was busy, too busy to think about home too much. It being the last day, the band and choir had a combined concert for the students. I saw the end of the first performance in the morning, so as I watched the afternoon rendition, I was counting down the songs until the end. With each song that passed, my stomach grew heavier. By the time the last song ended, I remember praying to God for it to please not end. Because I knew when it ended, school was over and I had to go home. Home, where I wasn’t married anymore. I was, let’s be honest, well on the backside of middle aged with no life partner anymore. And I was divorced. What decent woman would want me? Home, where my mom, who had always been my biggest fan, didn’t know who I was anymore. Home, where the Christmas tree sat in the basement undecorated with no presents underneath. I am not suicidal, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about how sweet it would be if I could just die so it would just quit hurting.

I bet most, if not all, of you could get up here and share a story that may not be exactly like mine but is just as gut-wrenching to think about for you as my story is for me. And I imagine that at least part of your response when you were going through that dark valley was to think some or all the following things that went through my mind on repeat:

• Why me?!
• Why am I such a loser? (What I originally wrote was a little more succinct and kind of coarse)
• God hates me!
• I’m being punished!
• This just hurts too much!

Maybe your dark valley wasn’t exactly like mine. There are lots of valleys, some of which we dig for ourselves, like when we allow ourselves to fall to temptation. Maybe you picked up your shovel when you accepted that invitation to coffee with that person who wasn’t your spouse. Or it could have been when you raised your hand in violence against your husband or your wife. Or maybe when you watched that first risqué video, or when you took that first drink or took that first pill. Who knows, maybe your shovel is ordered from Amazon, along with everything else you bought with money that was supposed to pay your mortgage. Or could it be you started digging that morning you decided you were just too tired to get up and read your Bible and pray? Just this one day. And then just this one week, and then month, and the next thing you know, you’re not even sure where your Bible is. I could go on. We all have our own shovels. And even as we’re using them, we probably think what we’re doing is harmless. It’s just a cup of coffee. It’s just a little porn. It’s just one more drink—I can quit whenever I want. After all, God wants me to be happy, right?

Before I go on, let me be clear. I’m not judging anyone. Thank God I don’t have to have that job. And some of those shovels I just described fit quite well in my hands.

Some valleys we find ourselves in not because of our sin, but because we live in a dark and broken world where bad things happen. You may have thought I was going to say bad things happen to good people. They don’t. We’re not good. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. But sometimes we find ourselves shoved over the edge of a cliff into a deep, scary valley that we did not dig. Maybe yours came not because you accepted that invitation to coffee, but because your spouse did. Or your spouse or your child or best friend is hooked on alcohol or prescription pain meds or heroin. Or maybe you’ve suffered the loss of a dear loved one. Perhaps you’ve been betrayed by a close friend or family member. Some of us are struggling to find work, or we are working at a job that just sucks out our soul and it takes every fiber of our being to force ourselves to get up and go to work each day. For some of us, our valleys are financial. The loss of a job, a large, unexpected expense, such as finding out you owe a large tax bill, or maybe a vehicle breaks down and the cost to repair it is just more than you can pay, but the vehicle is your only way to work. For many of us, it may be an unexpected health crisis, which can also lead to a financial crisis. On a spiritual level, sometimes we are doing all the right things, like studying our Bible and praying and spending time in fellowship and worship and giving of our time, talent, and treasure, and yet we still feel like we’re just walking through a valley filled with dry bones as far as the eye can see.

Ultimately, I guess it doesn’t really matter why we’re in the valley. Ultimately, it matters what we do once we’re there. We could be like a high school classmate who was on a Boy Scout hike that was apparently too long for him. His response was to sit down on a rock and say, rather melodramatically, according to a mutual friend of ours who was also on the hike, “Just leave me here to die.” Luckily, he had leaders and fellow scouts who chose not to do that and, despite his belief to contrary, he was able to finish the hike.

Another option might be, instead of asking, “Why me?”, asking, God, what do you want me to learn from this? How do you want me to grow?” Once we ask that, we will probably find our view has changed. We may not see our way clearly out of the valley, but we’ll be focused on the one person who can guide us through. As it says in Psalm 23 as I read earlier, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Once we’ve taken our eyes off of the problem and put them on God, things will at least begin to fall into a more proper perspective. This reminds me of an episode of the original Magnum PI, not the blasphemous remake. In the episode, Magnum, played by Tom Selleck—the only true Magnum—has broken into a house and finds he’s being chased by guard dogs. In running from them, he gets to a door that’s been locked from the other side. He whips out his lock picking tools. If he concentrates he can just make his escape. As he works, he keeps reminding himself, “Pick the lock, don’t look at the dogs, pick the lock, don’t look at the dogs.” But he looks at the dogs. And he doesn’t get the lock picked. It being a TV show, he gets away with it, but when we turn away from God long enough to look around at the valley we’re in, it doesn’t take long to surrender to despair again.
So, once we center ourselves on God, what might he be trying to teach us? The specific answers are myriad and depend on your exact situation, but there are a few things I think God wants to do for us as we follow Him to the other side of the valley. First, He wants to teach us to depend on Him. Second, He wants to prepare us for the future, whether it be another valley or something else. Finally, He wants to prepare us to be His hands and feet for others as they traverse their own valleys.

First, God is trying to teach us to depend on Him. James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” Psalm 34:4 says, “I sought the Lord and He answered me and delivered me from my fears.” Psalm 56 echoes this.

1 Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me;
all day long an attacker oppresses me;
2 my enemies trample on me all day long,
for many attack me proudly.
3When I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
What can flesh do to me?
5 All day long they injure my cause; Or they twist my words
all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6They stir up strife, they lurk;
they watch my steps,
as they have waited for my life.
7For their crime will they escape?
In wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
8You have kept count of my tossing; put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?
9Then my enemies will turn back
in the day when I call.
This I know, because God is for me.
10In God, whose word I praise,
in the Lord, whose word I praise,
11in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
12I must perform my vows to you, O God;
I will render thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death,
yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

As we take in these words, we must note that God doesn’t promise to deliver us from adversity, but He does promise to be by our side and protect our souls. Humans and this world can inflict all kinds of harm on our bodies, but they can’t harm our souls as long as we are drawing close to God. And the reality is, many of us, myself included, aren’t very good at drawing close when things are good. I know one of the ways God used my deep valley was beating the ego out of me. There were a lot of things that caused my marriage to fall apart, but one of them was definitely me and my ego. You cannot survive in a marriage—or any relationship—if you think you’re better than the other person. And, as hard as it is to admit it, I believed that. And I wasn’t going to be in any condition to be in a new relationship until that was gone from me. And I held onto it pretty tight, so it took a pretty good whipping to get rid of it. And, sad as it is, it’s still something I must keep turning over to God.

Another way I believe God uses our valleys to help us is to prepare us for the future, whatever that may be. We don’t know what the future holds, but one thing we can count on is that, until Christ returns, it’s going to consist of a cycle of mountains and valleys. We’ll have times of exultation, but we’re also going to have sorrows. Ecclesiastes tells us there will be, “A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” And we can deal with that cycle in one of two ways. We can respond with, “Oh no, not again—why me?” or we can allow God to remind us that we’ve been through this and more, we made it through. And by we, I mean us and God. So yes, there will be other valleys, but no matter how many there are, we can make it through them all as long as we draw close to God and stay there.

But sometimes God is using that valley to prepare us for a miracle. That was true for me. No, God didn’t want me to get divorced. But in his grace, he used that divorce and my mother’s health problems to knock the me out of me and to grow me into the person who was ready to accept the miracle that was my new family. I have a wife who is my best friend and my partner in ministry. And, despite my belief it would never happen, I have a beloved daughter. Thanks be to God for making miracles out of the rubble of our disasters.

Finally, I believe that not only is God using our valleys to prepare us for dealing with our own future sorrows, but he is also preparing us to be his hands and feet for others who may be struggling with their own dark times. God used Keith and Jennifer Schoenhut and Jonathan and Maria Delgado and the whole Encouragers Sunday School class to love me through those times and it’s my prayer that I can fill that role for someone else.

There’s a story of a person who suddenly fell ill and collapsed at an event. A fellow attendee jumped right in to help. “Everyone get back. I’m trained in first aid.” As he was getting the person into a comfortable position and checking for a pulse, another person stepped in, seemingly trying to offer help, but as he checked the victim for an obstructed airway, the first person proudly stated, “I’m trained in CPR and can handle this myself.” The newcomer tried to say something, but the good Samaritan shooed him away as he began chest compressions. “I’m trained in first aid,” he shouted. “I can handle this myself.” The second person stepped back and calmly said, “Okay, but when it comes time to ask if there’s a doctor nearby, I’m right here.” Maybe you’re like me and you like to think you can handle things yourself, and God loves you enough to let you decide to do just that. But he’s right there, waiting on us to call out and let him take over.