When There Are No Mountains

Christians often talk about "mountains and valleys." Mountains are those glorious times of intimacy with God, seeing God move in your life, when everything is on track. Valleys are those hard times of struggle, although we say this is where the growth happens. Trees don't grow on the top of Mount Denali in Alaska or El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, although Yosemite Valley is full of pines, oaks, and Giant Sequoias.

But what about those times without mountains? Without valleys?

Come on, Melissa, you have to choose one or the other. What else is there?

Have you ever been to Kansas?

The great plains are flat, uninteresting, never-ending. I would describe an emotional Kansas as that time of life when nothing affects you. You neither have joy nor despair. You have no excitement. You just are.

It is a place of depression, but unlike the valleys, there is a sense of perpetual plodding, ceaseless monotony. You go through every day because you have to, but enjoy none of it.

It's the difference between Dorothy's home and Oz. One is black and white, the other is technicolor.

My advice is this: keep going. No matter how ceaseless the monotony. No matter how perpetual the plodding. Just put one foot in front of the other. No matter where you start in that great state of Kansas, you will eventually either arrive in the mountains of Colorado or the wide expanse of the Mississippi River, and exciting Memphis on the other side.

Eventually you'll be able to say, like Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore.