The Valley
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:1-6
You don’t get over life; you go through it.
A past experience isn’t something you move on from. It changes you so that you are not the same person as you were before that tragic experience. As you go through life, you don’t come out the same on the other side. You don’t forget the experience of walking through the valley of the shadow of death after you return to the green pastures. You don’t forget the hurts God had to carry you through as you passed through the valley of shadows. You remember what happened to you in life, but you also remember how God gets you through it. And as you do so, you realize that where you are now is because you trusted God along the way.
Control what you can control.
While you can’t control the valleys and pastures you will go through, you can only control how close you stay to the Shepherd. You don’t get to decide what changes in your life but you get to decide how you will change in response to those changes. You are in control of yourself and you decide whether you will huddle close to the Shepherd in the valley or if you will stray from His protection. Staying near your Shepherd, it doesn’t change the fact that you are still in the valley of the shadow of death. Your experience of the valley is real and the comfort of Christ doesn’t take away from the reality of your suffering. But He bears your burden with you. Talk to Him about your experiences and tell Him all that troubles your heart. As you come out of the valley, you will always carry the memories of the shadows with you.
Forgiveness and amnesia are not synonyms.
A common adage you might hear is to forgive and forget. The phrase sounds good together with a for prefix + the same g sound in give and get. While you are always to forgive—”But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:15)—you do not and, I would argue, should not forget the life that has happened to you. Silence about the valley you walked through doesn’t get rid of the hurt; it gets rid of the healing. To say you have to forget the valley and move on with life minimizes the value of doing every part of life with Christ. If you forget how you trusted God in the valley, you forget that God is always good. By only forgiving when you can forget, you limit your experience of forgiveness to the ones you can determine that they turn out well for you. Control what you can control in life by walking close to Jesus through the valleys of shadows. Go through life with your Shepherd, both the valleys and green pastures, and as you forgive the evils done to you through the brokenness of our world, you will become more like Christ who suffered for no fault of His own.