A few weeks ago, after a long and stressful couple of days i had reached the limit. It was impossible to pretend that everything was "cool" and i felt completely defeated. As i was talking to a friend i said "wouldn't it be great if we could just live in good happy times?!" We both agreed it would be pretty awesome, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized "i bet we wouldn't learn anything if we only lived in the happy times." Four years ago when i started my missionary journey i remember thinking a lot about Mountain Top and Valley experiences we have in life. We traveled all over South Africa and seeing the landscape brought these experiences into focus. Type "valley" and "mountain top" into your google search engine and you will see pictures similar to what i found in South Africa. Valleys tend to be very green, have vegetation and the terrain is livable. Mountain tops tend to be rocky and bare but the one benefit of the mountain top, you can see the whole world from there...little is left out of your sight.
I think the valley gets a bad rap. Yes, we all love the happy times, times of victory, success and conquer. Its too easy to forget that the mountain top can only be achieved when we have fought, worked hard, lived, breathed and walked through the valley. The mountain top can't be the mountain top without the valley!
We are all a little like Garfield the Cat. We all know Garfield hates Mondays, i believe there was even an episode when there were no more Mondays, and although Garfield enjoyed it for a while, eventually Tuesdays became the new Monday. We may love the "Happy - Mountain Top" times, but if we never experienced the valley, mountain tops wouldn't exist. In the valley we live, grow, learn and are stretched to our limits...as a result of the valley we can enjoy those mountain top experiences.
Until next time...let's try to be a little more thankful for the valley, or in Garfield's case "Mondays"...
Photos were taken in Bad Plaas, Mpumalanga, South Africa on Prayer Mountain. I'm convinced it is called prayer mountain because you're praying that if you make it up there you can also make it back down. This is also when i decided climbing mountains really isn't my thing!
