The Valley

By Trish Weis

Psalm 23:4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear no evil for Thou art with me. 

Into the valley of the shadow of death was never a place I wanted to go – that verse had always terrified me as a child. Why would God take me to a place of pain and death? It never made sense to me.

My first experience in the valley was secondhand. I walked into the valley with two of my closest friends whose husbands had died in plane crashes while on deployment with the Navy. The pain and grief were more than I could bear, but the most amazing things begin to happen. These women, broken and grief stricken, begin to grow in their faith as they relied more and more on Him and his presence. It was so humbling to see how He held them up and comforted them. I never dreamed how much I would need that experience and their examples later.

On April 29, 2002, we awoke to discover our 24-year-old son, Matt, who was living with us, had passed away in the night. His death was not a shock as it was drug-related. For seven years he had battled drug addiction – and we had lived under the shadow of death daily. How often we would lie awake, praying he would come home, praying he could break free, trying to love through the anger and betrayal – crying out to the Lord for deliverance.
The Lord was all I had in the dark of the night and one of my devotions and a scripture that I came to rely on during that time was Psalm 61:1-2. “From the ends of the earth I will cry unto Thee; when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

Jesus was that rock that is higher than I, so I clung to that rock and to the hand of the only One who had held me through all the years of addiction. I wish I could describe how precious those years became – how I felt so loved and comforted-how I learned that He would always be there and I could trust him. So on the morning that Matt died it was very easy to cry out “Lord!” and simply place my hand in His.  After all, we had been walking together in the valley for a very long time.

There were not very many mountaintop experiences during this time – just a steady growing reliance on the one who held me and walked beside me through it all. Yet as time passed, I found it was less of a struggle to climb the mountain. And it occurred to me that he had been preparing me all along. Habakkuk 3:19 says “The Lord God is my strength and he will make my feet like Hinds feet and he will make me to walk upon my high places.”

But the mountaintop is not where we live. It’s in the valley where we learn of Him and learn to serve others. I came to love the valley that I had once feared because that is where He is and is the most real to me. Last fall, as I was praying with a friend who was in grief, I wrote this in my journal, “I do not to go to the mountaintop to meet my Lord; I go to the mountaintop to celebrate having walked with Him in the valley.“

My home is in the valley.