The Valley

 I dreamed of the valley again.

Three times now.

The first two dreams came to me in short, brief glimpses that I nearly ignored.

Introductions maybe.

Gentle nudges.

This third one longer, more vivid in color and clarity.

And I know now there is a purpose.

I have been awake for hours now. I finally get up decide to take an early morning walk to the valley that sits below my house. It used to be green and lush and full of growth and life. But somehow over the years it filled up with overgrowth and neglect. Trees died in the long drought. The river flow slowed over the years and finally dried up altogether and the deer stopped coming in searching for water. Sand filled in the riverbed that once flowed so freely and effortlessly and full. And now it is hard to even see where the natural flow of the river once was that kept this valley refreshed and alive. Vines started to wither and grow hard and crisp. As the colors turned from vibrant greens with the kaleidoscope of wildflowers into the browns and yellows of autumn, and onto the darkness of eternal winter the beautiful valley somehow became lost. It became a place to lay the debris from an old fence line. A place to leave the old tree stumps I pulled out and needed to discard.  A dumping spot for old rocks and bricks and leftovers from every mess I couldn’t stand to look at anymore. And at times, a place where others littered and vandalized.

At times I would try to clean the place up, rake up the debris piles with the intent to deal with it all later. But it eventually became the ruins of life, full of downed limbs over rock piles, the contoured terrain making it difficult to walk through, and the debris piles making it daunting to navigate.

 I used to know what lay beneath those old limbs, but now I’m not so certain. I take a long look at it all and walk back to the safety and solitude of my home. Frustrated with what I’ve let happen.  Unsure of how to deal with it all. Unsure of where I would start. Unsure of any purpose left of the old valley that sits below my house.

The dream returns that night. But on this night it is more insistent, like a message delivered directly into my spirit. It comes with a new vision. But also, instructions.  I hear it clearly as I am jolted from a deep sleep. It is still in the early hours before the sun has even whispered a good morning. I walk to the window that overlooks the valley and I hear it again, the message. Unable to stop myself I step out the back door into the moonlight, walking barefoot down the dirt path that leads the way. The air feels cool and damp so I slide my hands into my pockets. My hand instinctively wraps around the object in my pocket – my left hand exploring it as my mind identifies the old matchbox. I pull it out and realize I had it all along. But I briefly wonder how it arrived in the safety of a pocket of a jacket I have seldom worn.

As I move through the night, the dream comes back to me in intensity and color. I pause, as something in my heart moves – a feeling that is familiar but also still foreign. I hurry down the path, my walk turning into a rush, a run, a pull toward a purpose in the dark of night. I break out into the valley, the earth beneath my feet revealing the harsh ground, the broken vines, the rocks and sticks and dry earth that push against the tender skin so brutally. I feel a bubbling in my stomach. I bend over, suddenly light headed and aware of where I am. I pull the matchbox from my pocket and without thinking I bend close and strike one small, dry match alive against the strike plate. I press it into the mass of tangled undergrowth and dead vines and leaves of the first pile. The tiny flame catches, and with a breath of a prayer, it grows. I am mesmerized with the growing light. My pupils constrict gently against the brightness, and I warm my hands against her heat. It is a warmth I haven’t felt in some time now. And my heart aches gently at the goodness it spreads into my chest and across my arms, and into my cold hands. I relax against the deep warmth and shrug my jacket off.

Before I can even process what has happened, the night sky is alive with flame and orange and color and smoke and the burning away of the old. It smells smoky in my nose and in my mouth. My heart pounds alive and awake. I suck in deep breaths in spite of the smoke, the anticipation creating breath in me.  I watch the smoke curl up against the night sky and watch it go, catching onto a pocket of moving air that pulls it away to the west. The air clears a bit, my senses feeling more alive and awake, and I realize – this feels like freedom.

It burns inside of me. A flame growing in my heart that seems to mirror the burning pile of rubble in front of me. I watch it turn red and yellow with flames and ash and then I run to the next pile. Without thought or hesitation, I set it aflame as well. It burns brightly again, the smoke swirling, growing, burning away the dead and decayed and then leaving on the night air. My eyes water as my stomach clenches. Emotion has grown wide and deep in me as I watch what I have created and then let go of. Pile after pile go up in flames. Tears stream down my face in rivers. This “letting go” creating space as my soul empties itself out. I realize I am filthy, dirty, traces of ash on my hands and face, but a smile I haven’t felt in years spreads across my cheeks. I turn to the face of the dawn, the sun waking up to find me awake and alive and full of an expounding joy.

As the sun breaks over the eastern hill it reveals the carnage of my actions. I take a breath in and think to myself that there is so much work to be done. So much to be cleared. Yet so much potential. The sun warms my face, and I stretch my muscles that seem to have been dormant for years. The dying flames of my debris piles slowly revealing ash. There are still a few rocks left in the pile, and I wonder what will become of those.

Before I decide, I gather my tools and I return to the work before me in the vacancy of the valley. I rake, I shovel, I pull out the dying vines. I turn the earth over in my hands and watch the blackness of fertile soil fall between my fingers. It smells clean and fresh and I plunge my feet in the coolness of the now soft, fresh earth. And I know, I am making this a place I want to be, a place I love, a place I find peace. My feet and legs now black with earth, my knees turned rough with dirt where they have been planted in the work and the digging out of the old to prepare for the new.

I work through the day that has turned into heat. My back aches. I sweat relentlessly and cleanly. Burning through grief, sadness, judgement, condemnation, shame, hurt, and guilt. The remnants sweating themselves out and running down my skin. The burden of them burned away with the strike of an matchbook I didn’t own. I think about this as I pull my buried knees from the ground.

I turn back to my burned piles. I step gently into the ash and pull out the stones that are now more round and smooth than I first thought. “I can use these”, I think to myself. I pull each one out of the pile, and I carry each one carefully to the edge of where I think the riverbed used to be, which is now on a different course, one by design. I line the riverbank with them all. One by one. Creating a stepping stone path along the banks of the dry riverbed. Stones of life. Stones of experience. Stones of memories that will be used to guide the way forward. Now smoothed over and flat. Perfect for creating a pathway ahead.

I haul off the remaining brush and limbs. I put my tools away. And I survey my work. My valley is almost clean, not perfect, but in process. The decay is cleared and the old has been burned away. I look at my hands and my feet. Both dirty, scraped, bleeding, and blistered. All things that will be cleaned and healed. I suddenly realize how tired I am. I turn back to my house and make the journey back up the path, exhaustion about to take me over, as much emotionally as physically.  

I shower, watching the earth swirl down the drain and away. I scrub my tender, tanned skin. Feeling drained but renewed. Soon after, I tend the cuts and scrapes and make sure the wounds are clean so they heal properly. And without another thought, I sleep the sleep of the healed.

My sleep returns that night, and it takes me deep into the recesses of the dark quietness. I rest deeply, until a sound rattles me awake. I hear the wind hit. A gust front has slammed against the west window. I wake, startled, panicked, and on alert. Before I reach the window to look out over my hard days’ work the rain comes. Sheets of pounding rain blinding any view I have. I jerk open the door leading to my path, but the torrents stop me from running blindly down the path to see my ruined work. I watch in shock and collapse in a heap on the floor, a feeling of profound grief sending me to my knees as I worry and wonder what will happen to my valley of peace. A sob escapes my mouth, but behind it – a sudden outpouring of my heart and soul empties itself out onto the floor in the form of bottled up tears. This is the outpouring, the purging, the final exhalation of what I held onto for so long. Everything inside of me escaping, wanting to be rescued and held as deeply as anything I have ever known.

The Undoing.

The Letting Go.

The Rescue.

The Design.

The New.

 

I am aware of only stillness now, a slight uttering only, as I realize the grief has slowly shifted into peace. I listen to the rain pound for what seems like hours. And as it finally recedes and retreats I watch the sun come up slowly, predictably. I have remained here, on the floor, in wait for the final reveal. Preparing my heart for what God has allowed upon me. Knowing now, that what He decides is out of an undiluted Love. Just as designed. I watch this sun rise slowly in awe on this morning until her face is fully revealed. And with a deep breath, I walk gently and slowly down my freshly washed path. From my view I see what the rains have done. And I realize I am holding my breath as I take one hesitant first step. My eyes refocus and I begin to run, uninhibited to what lay before me.

The brutal gust front that blew through in the dead of night took the piles of ash with it. Every trace of the debris piles now gone, first burned away, then blown into the eastern night, and finally – washed clean. Every trace gone. The remnants washed away with the unapologetic force of the storm.

The vines I tore out laid the earth open. But the pounding rain revealed new growth that had laid dormant beneath the sun scorched ground. The dead leaves I raked up had nourished the ground quietly, silently, like the prayers of the multitudes that happen only in the quietness of dark nights and folded hands. My valley has already sprung forth new grass, native buffalo grass that will burst with blues and greens in the coming weeks and will whisper softly as the wind blows through it like reeds along the riverbank.

But the river…. My river… the one I worked so hard to prepare, that was filled with sand and blown topsoil, now flows full and alive and around the curved lines and hills and dips in the natural layout of the valley itself. The sand that buried it, gently washed downstream, disappearing as it follows the direction it was given.

I stand in wonder and awe and renewal. My knees finding the earth once again, but this time in thanks and overwhelming peace that flows through my once ravaged heart.

My valley, full of growth and new life.

A place of peace.

A place I love.

A place I want to be.

Once a valley, now a garden.