When Mountaintop Becomes Valley by Sydney Marple
I am a Nashville Fellow. It’s something I had dreamed of being able to say for so long - something I had talked to friends about, sought wise counsel on, and fought hard for. I labored to get here. I sat at the feet of Jesus and cried. I worked through the doubt and the fear and the frustration of the application process and I did it. Around this time last year, I was telling people with confidence and pride that I had been accepted and my spiritual journey would continue in Nashville. The Fellows Program felt like my peak. If I could just get to be in this one program, I would be okay post-grad. I was close to my mountaintop; I could almost taste it. Goodness was coming and the knowledge I had the chance to gain by being a Fellow made my head spin with excitement.
Little did I know a couple months later a global pandemic would take my senior year of college from me. After months of living at home and adjusting to the reality of the loss of my eagerly anticipated senior year, the possibility of the Fellows program happening looked slim. How could this be? This thing that Jesus had so clearly pushed me to - this thing that I had done all this work to secure, may not be what my future held after all. During what was supposed to be one of the best years of my life, I found myself just trying to stay afloat. Angry with God, I began to distance myself.
Because I am writing this and you are reading it, you know that the Fellows program decided to run this year. However, they do so under new leadership with a new housing environment and new guidelines. Quickly, this thing I had clenched with white-knuckled fists all throughout the past year suddenly shifted shape and seemed to slip out of my grip. The things I anticipated learning through, living with a host family and having adult and family mentorship were now gone, and the things I would learn through community housing were now impending realities. That is not to say that it is not still tangibly good, but only to say that it doesn’t look quite like the program I thought it would be.
One of my dear friends would encourage me through her own story to look for olive branches in the midst of the difficult, and so I have quietly done so for many weeks. I connected with the other Fellows in ways I didn’t imagine I would. I found freedom in friendship again. I was laughing hard at something every night and enjoying the rhythms of deep community.
Roughly 3 weeks into the program, the unthinkable happened in my family. Although Jesus prevailed over death, the reality of having to look death in the face was unnerving. The reality of what I believe about life and death felt overwhelming. The reality of what I believed about miracles was now palpable. The reality of grace and love was more wonderfully unbelievable than ever before. A week later, a friend from college passed away. All the joy I had felt about a life saved and miracles performed turned to confusion and anger about lives lost. Suddenly, everything I believed - both the good and the bad - was cast into a bright and altogether blinding light. To believe on your mountaintop is one thing, but to have to stand on your beliefs when your mountaintop suddenly becomes your valley is another.
In my free fall from mountaintop to valley, I made some poor choices. I walked away from reading my bible for a period of a couple of weeks, telling others I “didn’t have time” and convincing myself that doing the readings for our Fellows class on Mondays was sufficient. I ran from the God of mystery who had proven himself to be mysterious. I ran from the God of free grace, overwhelmed and yet ashamed by the free grace I had been given.
It’s hard, even now, to admit all of this to you as I labor my way back into the arms of grace. I never want to be seen as someone who “doesn't have it all together”, as ridiculous as that statement is to begin with. So here I am, admitting to all of you that I don’t have it all together even though I am a Nashville Fellow. There is no freedom in being unknown, even if it means others knowing you aren’t perfect.
As I have had time to slow down and reflect on the last couple of weeks, I have come to the realization that what I was pursuing was always a lonely mountaintop. I forgot (or rather, chose not to remember) that the beautiful part about being on a mountaintop is looking over the valley. The deeper the valley, the more beautiful the view. What is a beautiful view without anyone to marvel at it with?
Jesus has given me the Fellows to enjoy my coming mountaintop with. Fellows, in their kindness, will labor with me to the top. They will continue to remind me to laugh in the valley. They will encourage me to spend more time actually with God than I spend avoiding God. They will remind me that nobody expects perfection from me. They will remind me that there is beauty in written prayer when I don’t have the words of my own. They will lovingly tell me no. They will encourage me to take the next right step. These are the people who will help show me the olive branches to hold onto in my free fall from mountaintop to valley. This is still the God-breathed community that I signed up for -- and maybe the changes that have happened to the program were God caring for me personally and intimately before I knew of the coming trials. In my journey back to intimacy with God with newfound fear and reverence of Him, I am reminded of my favorite quote from J.S. Parks. I am reminded that the Fellows (my friends) will encourage me to try again even if it means failing again. He is here, with grace like warm water for cold bruised hands.
”There are stretches of dryness where I haven’t been praying, reading His words, reflecting on Him, singing to Him, really engaged, really in tune. I sometimes choose later. I tell Him “Tomorrow I’ll make the time, tomorrow I’ll miss You enough, later when I’m ready” - and tomorrow He is there but I am not.
So I have to stop. I have to take to the ground. I have to force a confrontation. I have to run through the fits and starts, the stutter of that first prayer, the tightening coil of distractions, and the noise of my own mind. I need urgency to find Him. And there He is always, like warm water for cold bruised hands, like sun upon the hill. And I remember how good He is, how right, how so above the fleeting, how utterly true. I remember that I don’t have to wait, that He is not mad at my distance, and I don’t have to hold myself back from Him. I know that Sundays can be today. He is here, with grace.” J.S. Parks
