I Will Join You In The Valley

Sometimes things in life are just incredibly difficult.  Sometimes there are no answers to give.  Sometimes faith appears fickle and the idea of hope…hopeless.

It has been a couple of months now since I last blogged but man can I say that it has not been due to the lack of anything meaningful.  Sometimes experiences are such a simultaneous mixture of burden, joy, transformation, renewal, and immense heaviness that one doesn’t even know where to start. Where do I pick up the pen and start writing?  When do I answer the phone and start processing?  How do I open my mouth and start praying? 

Well here is my attempt to address some of that through blog form…

January/February updates first:  I was able to go home for a week over New Years and spend some much needed restful and celebratory time with my family.  I returned with a renewed eagerness and sense of confidence in serving out here with some clear visions in mind of how to be more fully invested and engaged on the Hill.    Many of those hopes have been coming to full fruition.  A week after returning I got to celebrate the graduation of 3 men, who had become close and inspiring friends to me since September.  The magnitude of the joy, redemption, and hope these 3 young men possessed truly cannot be expressed.  Witnessing the graduation ceremony in September had been meaningful but starkly paled to the experience of watching 3 friends cross the stage and receive certificates and give speeches that symbolized the transformation and opportunity for new life they had wrestled through and received over the last year. 

That celebration came and went though as His Mansion quickly prepared for a new group of residents arriving a week later.  As new men arrived and began their month of induction each of them were partnered with one of us short-term staff as their personal mentor (this differed from before when all of us mentors served as a general support and model for all of the residents).  It was definitely a positive shift for the program and I was grateful for the opportunity to engage on a much deeper and more personal level with one of the new guys.  Another avenue that has allowed me to engage on a much deeper level within the program and journey alongside the men has been the opportunity to join one of the phase classes as an assistant teacher.  I am helping out in the Inner Healing class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  From what Ive heard this class is the meat of much of the healing and transformation that residents go through as they process and bring to the surface times of deep hurt, broken relationships, and damaging events throughout their life.  The class is centered around healing prayer as guys come to an understanding of how they turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms that in turn have developed into all sorts of addictive and life-controlling behavior in their lives.   I am eager to walk alongside some of the guys in this class and for the level of involvement and encouragement that I get to offer as I share my own life alongside them.  The last area that Ive seen a lot of fruit in throughout the last month has been in encouraging and getting to know the other mentors on a much deeper level.  Many of the mentors I live and lead alongside have become good friends of mine and are guys that I really enjoy spending a lot of my down time off the hill with. 

All of that sounds great and I could easily wrap up my post here and keep it nice and tidy.  An encouraging little update on all the positive ways I am growing and leading and choosing to serve others.  Ideal testimony sharing right?   But it wouldn’t be accurate and in many ways any further from the truth in how Ive actually been here.  Why? Because this last month here has been the most difficult, exhausting, and over-bearing time Ive faced here yet.  And to leave out the burden and struggle would be to paint a false picture.   The reality is that ministry is painful, draining, and often very lonesome.  The more involved I choose to be with residents the more aware I become of how deeply hurt and entangled their lives have become and the more I recognize short-comings in my own life as well.

  

Personally mentoring one of the residents was a fantastic opportunity to be a role model, encourager, and older brother to someone deeply hurting but made it all the harder to watch the young man I had been mentoring decide this was not the place for him and leave about a week ago.  It means listening night after night to intense anger, hurt, loneliness, and hopelessness in these new guys lives as they pour out personal stories of severe pain and abuse they have been victim too and/or caused.  Where is God in all that?  Where is faith in all that?  I have gotten some of the hardest situations and questions imaginable thrown in my face out here.  Where does one begin to pick up his life?  Sometimes there are no answers to give. And it all begins to wear. 

Beyond the weight of this place I suddenly found myself all the more discouraged by some personal trials and burdens, not least of which being news of my grandmother’s cancer and deteriorating health.  Its seemed as if there were no break in sight.   In the midst of all the heaviness I found myself suddenly lost in a deep depression that I could find no real release or escape from.  It did not seem to matter how I strived harder, prayed relentlessly, or processed with others.  Even if I felt some peace in the moment it was as if I couldn’t find the strength or motivation the next day.  I found myself stuck in the haze of an intense situational depression.

I have not hidden the fact that I have been struggling a lot with those I have been ministering here to.  In fact I have had all the more opportunity as I become much more involved with many of them.  And instead of being a drag and discouragement, like I feared, I found that through the transparency and honesty I expressed I was able to be an encouragement and comrade alongside those deeply struggling.  Because like each of them I found myself down in the valley.  Where there are no easy answers.  Where sometimes it just hurts.   

During the last week I have found myself moving more from a place of depression into a place of trust.  Its hard to pinpoint any sudden realization or transformation in a moment.  I did not suddenly read the right verse, identify some secret sin, or bring myself before the Lord in prayer in a new way that suddenly lifted a cloud of depression.  But God has been faithful along the way.  He has allowed me to remain faithful in service and love towards others and carried me through each day one at a time.  My situation has not gotten easier; the heavy things I am facing are all still there.  But I think in simply arising each day anew and choosing to be present and press in amidst discouragement, I was slowly starting to find new life. Perhaps the best way I can illustrate this paradox of angst and inspiration is through this video that my brother shared with me as an encouragement last week.  After losing both his wife and unborn baby due to a driver falling asleep at the wheel Erik later set out and formed a lasting friendship with the man who had killed his family. The most insightful and powerful part of this video comes with Erik’s closing statement:

“One thing I’ve learned through this experience is this: that God is faithful and that when our little bit of faith would intersect with His faithfulness God shows up big and does some amazing things in us and through us.”

http://newspring.cc/blog/stories/erik-and-matthew#ooid=pzNjIxMjovA-Lbzs_yR5ICjmREPiR7ZG

At some point last week I began to realize I had been asking Jesus to give me strength and joy, rather than asking Him to be my strength and my joy.  It was then that I suddenly received a simple message from the Lord that simultaneously spoke to the condition of my heart as well as to how God has called me to serve here at His Mansion.  It was just a simple phrase packed with meaning and is what I decided to title this post:  “I will join you in the valley.” It’s the promise of the Gospel.  What Jesus has done for us, how God chose to save us, how He continues to meet and save us, and how He calls us to shine His light to the rest of those around us.  God did not create me, inspire me, and redeem me to sit on the experience of my mountaintops (for which I have experienced many in recent years), but for the purpose of rushing back down to the valley to proclaim and testify by my very life the things that I have glimpsed.  God did not create us in order to live in the valley we find ourselves, but the reality is we do find ourselves there.  We were created for a Heavenly Kingdom; one that will never perish, spoil or fade, but one that, at least presently, we find ourselves quite distant from. But in those moments when we do glimpse it, when I have caught a glimmer of the vision of His Kingdom it is flooded with a knowing that I can never be the same; there is no going back for I have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord.  His gates are just around the corner and His mountain is massive and glorious beyond all comparison or imagination.  All the more radical then, does it make the realization that He was the one to initiate first and come join us in the valley.

For anyone who may be in similar place of feeling burdened or discouraged…..I have been listening to these songs on repeat for the last month.  Through so many times when I felt like I couldn’t press on the messages in these songs helped carry me through:    In The Valley