It boggles my mind and leaves me scratching my head when I hear of some of the “valley” stories that people share. One of those stories was shared with me by a very close friend of mine many years ago. Her name was Catherine. I met her by accident, or not, when I was shopping for a bed for my son, after he figured out how to escape his then-current prison—his crib.
At the time, Catherine was the manager for a children’s furniture company. Our divinely planned meeting became the beginning of a 10-plus- year friendship. She had been ill for awhile and just learned of the diagnosis: Mediterranean Familia Fever. MFF, similar to Tay-Sachs Disease, is a genetic illness common among Jews from the Mediterranean region. Catherine was French.
Through our friendship, I walked with her on a treacherous journey through a valley far darker than most. My participation was through hearing her story, which she had never shared with another living soul. Her journey began during occupied Paris, during Hitler’s maniacal "Final Solution." She was born in 1942 and lived through the horrors of the German occupation as a Jewish child. Having miraculously survived the atrocities, but not without the deeply embedded wounds, Catherine’s story led her to England and then the United States, where she found her Messiah Jesus. I was very blessed and honored to be the Lord’s instrument in her new-found faith. Several years later, she discovered she had yet a second disease, equally as debilitating and fatal.
I watched my friend’s life become consumed by the ravaging sickness and everything she held dear, sans her faith in Jesus and his love for her. Most people might have been angry with God, because he did not answer her prayers (and mine) to supernaturally restore her health. I never heard one single word of resentment, doubt about her faith, or self-pity, even in the depths of excruciating pain that even morphine could not relieve. Not once. In fact, her love and dependence on God only grew with her physical decline until the day she passed from this life to the next.
She forgave her torturers—the Nazis and her parents—and lived a life free of hatred. Catherine exemplified the love and life of Christ like I have never seen in another person. Her valleys were the very things that led her straight into the very heart of God. Her death ushered those who knew and loved her into a dark valley of their own. Catherine’s valleys did not destroy her, they made her; in the same way a piece of black coal is subjected to the intense fire in which it is placed to produce a diamond. This is a valley phenom—a life that has suffered and thrived, even in its greatest pain.