ROMANTICIZING GOD IN THE VALLEYS:
Five years of medical college had felt like my own little world. I was surrounded by people I loved, constantly involved in something that made life feel full, and somehow always carried by a sense of freedom and purpose.
Then my MBBS internship ended, college ended, and suddenly I was back home, trying to understand a new version of life.
The freedom was different. The responsibilities were different.
Every day seemed to bring something new to think about, worry about, or figure out, such as job, exams, the future, the expectations kept on me, the responsibilities on my shoulders.
But perhaps the biggest shift wasn’t external. It was spiritual.
College had been a season where I knew how to romanticize God on an everyday basis.
Looking back, I think one of the biggest changes after MBBS wasn’t in my circumstances, but in my relationship with God.
For five years, college had been a season where my spiritual life felt so alive. I knew how to romanticize God: Spending time with Him, being part of a Christian fellowship, leading worship, preaching sermons, serving God and constantly being surrounded by people who did the same.
God felt woven into the ordinary moments of my life.
There was joy in knowing Him. There was excitement in seeking Him. There were moments when His presence felt so tangible that loving Him almost felt effortless.
And then college ended.
I came home, and somehow, the spiritual rhythm I had known disappeared with it. The fellowship gatherings, the familiar people, the worship, the ministry, all of it felt distant.
And for the first time, I had to learn what it meant to seek God when there was nothing around me making it easy.
That was when my faith entered a completely different season.
The God I had so joyfully experienced on the mountains suddenly felt quiet in the valleys.
There were doubts. There were dry seasons. There were days when prayer felt empty and worship didn’t come naturally. All I had with me was tears that can’t be explained .I felt like I had lost the closeness I once had with my Savior.
And, somewhere along the way, I felt like I had lost my sense of purpose too.
At the same time, life outside of faith was becoming heavier. Real adulting, hospital duties, competitive exams, big expectations, uncertainty about the future. Everything was happening all at once.
And I realized how much I had relied on God when life felt beautiful, but how little I understood about relying on Him when life felt confusing and new.
I had hit what felt like the rock bottom of my spiritual life.
But God never turned His back.
God made me understand that it’s time for my faith to come out of it’s comfort zone.
He slowly reminded me that I needed Him in my valleys just as much as I had needed Him on my mountains.
In the mountains, I knew God through the joy, the answered prayers, the victories, the presence of a Christian community, the fellowship gatherings, the songs, the sermons, the moments that made His presence feel obvious.
But in the valley, I began to know Him differently.
Quieter. Deeper. And more personally.
There were no loud shouts of joy or great victories to celebrate. Sometimes, there was only silence and tears on the pillows.
A repeat version of everyday life.
Chaotic workdays, where I shared intimate moments with God through tearful worship while driving to and fro from work.
And within that silence came the quietest whispers of God.
A Father who stayed.
A Friend who didn’t leave.
A Shepherd who continued walking beside me even when I failed to hear His voice.
And perhaps that was the kind of faith I had never learned in the mountains.
Because having God with me on the darkest roads, through doubts, uncertainty, loneliness, failures and quiet seasons, taught me something beautiful:
I don’t only need God when life is beautiful.
I need Him when I don’t understand.
I need Him when I don’t have answers.
I need Him when I don’t feel spiritual.
I need Him when all that I have is a tired heart at the end of a tiring day.
I need Him when even my most cherished circle does not understand me.
Maybe this season wasn’t about losing God.
Maybe it was about discovering Him differently, in a way where the acquaintances of the world could never be to me.
Not just as the God of my mountains, but as the God who stays in my valleys, even when the whole world walks away.
Not just as my Savior in moments when I could loudly praise Him,
but as my Father and my Best Friend in moments when all I could do was quietly hold on to the rem of His garment.
And perhaps that is what growing in faith really looks like:
As how the Psalmist quotes in one of his hymns – the Psalm 27,
“When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the Lord will take care of me”
Even at the rock bottom of life ,where no help can be seen or felt from the world,
God will always have our back.
Reminds me when David was chastened by his own son,
I have always wondered how he would have felt.
He would have hit the rock bottom of his life, right?
We lose our temper, feel unloved by God when we find that our lives don’t go the way we had scheduled it.
Look at the Psalmist,
A completely hopeless scenario with a human nature to question God and His purpose in his life.
Yet David chose to rest in God’s divine plan and surrendering unto Him despite the heartbreak his own family member had caused him and how situations went out of his hands.
Enabling me to learn that even when I can’t find strength and assurance in the loved ones or when I can’t find peace when the storms are greater than I,
I can still rest in Him.
Even when I can’t hear Him loudly,
He is still near.
Even when life loses its color,
He is still my purpose.
Even when the oceans rise,
He is still in my boat.
And even in the valley,
He is still my Shepherd.
Today if you feel that you have hit the rock bottom of your life,
Either in your spiritual life or worldly one,
We are called to be like the Psalmist,
With our eyes fixed on God and never on the temporary comfort the world gives us, which stays today and withers away tomorrow.
Let’s learn to stop putting our hope in the people of this world, who so often fail us.
And let us not lose our hope in Christ, for He is faithful.
For 2 Timothy 2:13 says,
“If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.”
Let’s learn to romanticize God even on the days life doesn’t seem pretty good,
For the God of the mountains is still the God of the valleys.