Day 41

Monday, April 14th

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. 

(Psalm 23:4 NLT)

When I wrote Volume 1 of Wake Up Walk On four years ago, I recounted a decades-long spiritual desert experience that I had come through. I wrote:

There were things in my nature that had to go and the wilderness was the only way to be rid of them—the way of fire, of purification, of peeling and stripping away my false selves. 

There was a deep work that God needed to do in my heart—a leaving behind of some old ways—false and shallow, and a rebirth of sorts. I needed, once again, to be made new. I needed to re-become who I was meant to be and that could only happen in the desert.

God’s call to “Wake up” marked the end of that desert experience, and I was so ready to leave it behind. Clutching new-found hope to my chest, I stood, the desert behind me, looking out at the road in front of me. I expected to scale a mountain, leaving all the fears and doubts and despair behind me, and once I reached the top, that’s where I planned to stay. Because I’d been transformed in the desert right? Couldn’t a mountaintop experience be next?

But instead of a mountain, I looked down into a deep valley, and beyond that, was a wide expanse of prairie where wildflowers, wheat fields, and long grasses moved softly in the wind. Not a mountain peak in sight. It seemed that God wasn’t finished with me yet.

CS Lewis’ book The Voyage of the Dawntreader is about an insufferably spoiled, selfish and greedy boy named Eustace. One day he steals a gold bracelet from a dragon’s hoard and when he puts it on his arm, he turns into a dragon. Dejected and alone, the bracelet cutting deep into the flesh of his huge dragon arm, he longs to be a boy again, but no matter how hard he tries to rid himself of the heavy scales and the thick dragon skin, he couldn’t do it on his own. 

Aslan, the Great Lion who represents Jesus, heard Eustace’s cries and he answered:

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there I was, smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.

Hearing God’s voice in the desert to “wake up” was the end of something in my life, but it was also a beginning. Though the heavy scales of my false-selves had fallen away, there was still a thick layer that remained. It was one thing to admit that I had been hiding behind a mask, and another thing entirely to understand what made me put the mask on in the first place. I didn’t know when I had made those inner vows. I didn’t know when or why I had created this imposter-self to hide behind. But God knew I needed to understand. He knew that in order for me to be truly free from my past, I had to let Him take me back there.

So, leaving the desert, God and I went down into that deep valley. I can’t think of a better way to describe those three years of therapy, though the description of having layers of thick skin peeled off comes close. I wish I could tell you there is an easier way, some shortcut to leaving your past behind you and becoming your true self, but there just isn’t. In order to move forward, we have to go back. But we don’t have to be afraid.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

(Psalm 23:4 NIV)

What is your next step? Ask for prayer? Find a Christian Counsellor? Sign up for Freedom Session? Go to rehab?

God told me while I was writing this that there would be someone reading it whose next step is rehab. And so I pray for you, that you would have the courage to take that step. God has a future full of hope waiting for you on the other side.

Whatever your next step is, we want to help you take it. 

Have courage. Remember that God is with you wherever you go. 

Text CARE to 604-670-3040