Article September 13, 1969 Issue

Climb Out of the Valley

LAWRENCE R. WOOD

A valley experience is often dejection in depth. Sometimes it is a trapped feeling of personal imprisonment, of being surrounded with seemingly insurmountable obstacles or threatened with physical torments. The way up is the only way out.

Some years ago the writer was aroused to realize that he had wandered into just such a valley. He had become weighed down by keenly competitive business activities, forgetting to put the things of the Spirit first. Ultimately he found himself sitting in the depths of gloom. When a physician advised an immediate operation, the climb out of this valley became the most important steps in his life!

Pondering his problems, he recalled a fear-filled experience of his youth at a time when he had lost his way in a valley growing swiftly dim in the dusk. As a lowering curtain of mist inked out the stars, he had decided to spend the night there and had built a fire on a wide, fiat rock. The cold, dark, and seemingly interminable hours that followed were filled with the dread of insects and creeping things of the night, with rustlings in the bushes that suggested prowling night life lurking just beyond the shadows. Grotesque shapes cast by the flickering embers of the fire took on the chilling threat of a hostile presence. And yet, next morning, as he climbed out of the valley and looked back upon the scene, its sunlit and breathtaking beauty amazed him. He realized how groundless his fears had been.

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