The Valley Between

Even the valley can bloom again.

“The Peony Vale,” I said aloud, turning it over again and again - feeling the way it rolled off my tongue, listening to the poetic and editorial way its sound filled the room. I noted its maturity when compared to my long list of previous websites.

Off the top of my head, I counted six prior blogs and websites. Each one was for a different season of life. Each one told a different story, even as common threads ran throughout. I created the last one, Home Sweet Moggy Home, hoping it would become more like this. But God had other ideas.

Home Sweet Moggy Home was where restoration truly began. It’s where I told pieces of the story of trauma and abuse. The majority of our dirty laundry was on full display as I released what had been trapped inside me through it all. No one had listened before. Only some seemed to listen then. But slowly, the narrative surrounding me began to shift. The naysayers grew quieter.

Life, though still full of shaking and warfare, finally began to turn around. Through the blog, I brought exposure by reclaiming my voice. With that reclamation came our journey home…and our fight to remain here. It was messy. Embarrassing. Shameful. I wanted people to read it just as much as I wanted them to avert their eyes. And if I am honest, the name that housed it all always struck me as too cutesy. No matter how I turned it, even abbreviated to HSMH, it never held the elegance that I really wanted. Regardless, it cleared the path and led us here.

“The Peony Vale,” I spoke again. Yes. It holds the potential for journalistic integrity, fullness, and legacy.

The Word That Stopped Me

My only reservation was the word Vale. Beautiful or not, it is another word for valley. I had spent plenty of time there and had no interest in languishing in one any longer. Certainly, life is filled with mountaintops and valleys. When one climb is done, we often start another. But why would I want to lay a foundation in the valley, Lord?

That question led me to Psalm 84:6 and, with it, the realization that I laid the valley foundation years prior.

As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

A few things struck me as I read through the entirety of Psalm 84 and returned to verse 6.

First, those in the Valley of Baka pass through. They don’t stay there. It is part of the journey toward restoration, but not the whole story.

Perhaps HSMH was my Valley of Baka. It was dry. Oh. So. Dry. Parched. My tears of pain, exposure, humiliation, and trauma soaked the arid earth. Silence echoed, reverberating off the surrounding mountains as I laid bare my soul. The echoes were my only feedback. Yet His tangible presence stayed with me and encouraged me through.

And in that place, living water began to flow.

It was the season where truth broke through and obliterated the silence. Where I could no longer be ignored, and shockwaves rippled outward from what I dared to share with terrifying vulnerability. It was the time I made perpetrators and their enablers angrier by refusing to stay buried beneath the headstone they had placed over me. It was where I publicly declared I would no longer carry the responsibility, pain, and suffering that were never mine in the first place.

Somehow, God used the place of exposure and shame to dig wells. It became a holy place of healing and refreshment, though refreshment is not the word I would have used at the time.

When the Valley Blooms

The Peony Vale does not represent pain and suffering. Nor does it prophesy a lifetime of weeping. No. It represents what grew from them.

The weeping place became a beautiful garden. It is the place where restoration truly began.

The Lord calls forth beauty from dry, barren ground. He meets us in our darkest, most defeated places. Do you see Him? Do you know that He wastes nothing and will use every bit of it if you let Him?

You cannot skip the valley. Life does not work that way. Sometimes it is so wide and vast that you wonder if you’ll ever emerge. The planned destination that once seemed so close may be farther than you thought.

Your only choice is to walk through it. If you accept His hand in the walking, the Lord will be faithful to turn it into springs. Rain finally falls again in the valley, showering the evidence of His faithfulness right over the face of your pain.

It may only be when you look back that you see it. For flowers rarely spring forth in fullness overnight. They take time, patience, hope, and faith.

And what transpires in the valley is not just for you. Your faithful journey through waters the gardens of refreshment for those traveling and travailing behind you. Weep as much as you need to weep. Wrestle with God as much as you need to wrestle with Him.

And remember, even the valley can bloom again.