Have you ever been on top of a mountain so high that you felt like you could reach out and touch the sky, the stars, the moon and even the Creator Himself? In that moment did you find clarity? Did God give you a divine revelation? Or did you feel a spiritual closeness of how God must see things from the overview of His landscape He so meticulously designed? There is such a wow moment when you are on “top of the world” looking down. But what happens when you go from wow to now?

I can remember one of my high points that had many wow moments. To this day it is still one of the best road trips I have ever taken. My best friend Leslie Gail and I had tickets to see Adele in Seattle but instead of flying we planned a 10-day road trip where we drove and stopped along the way. So she mapped it all out and we stopped and hiked at the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming and then saw Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota lit up in the evening. We also took a cruise on the Clipper to San Juan Island in Washington State to watch whales and pass through Puget Sound, a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins that include the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Admiralty Inlet, Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel. And even though seeing Adele live in concert was an incredible experience that I will never forget, driving up Pike’s Peak feeling like you were going to just over the edge and then finally standing on a ledge at the top of Pike’s Peak seeing across the sky then looking down to see just how far you had climbed on this remarkable journey, was more than breathtaking, it was like touching the face of God. There is such a natural high you feel when you are at the top of everything. It even takes me back to driving through the Gardens of the Gods in Colorado and seeing the beauty of Yellowstone. Even standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and then walking over the canyon on the Grand Canyon West Skywalk was so exhilarating that it made me want to see all of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, including the Aurora Borealis (a dream destination I wanted to see with my dad before he passed), Victoria Falls, the Great Barrier Reef, Paricutin, the harbor of Rio de Janeiro and Mount Everest. So many wow moments yet to be seen!

But what do you do in these “now” situations? You know the ones that slap you in the face when the doctor says you have an incurable autoimmune disease, diabetes or even worse -cancer. What do you do in those situations when work deadlines are right now but you are struggling just to get up and breathe? What about those moments when you need everything to just work right now, but your 6-month-old washing machine leaks gallons of water into your laundry room and bedroom closet and you have to shell out the big bucks for a plumber and shop vac. Then in the same week your icemaker on your nearly new refrigerator goes out and it’s a $200 part. How about the moments when your car with less than 60,000 miles on it decides to strand you on a day when you’re covering multiple events for work – and that’s another $300? Then a few weeks later it has to go back into the shop for more work, costing another $430. Then to put the icing on the cake, your hot water tank decides to go out and blows hot water everywhere flooding your kitchen and your packed garage ruining things you can’t replace and costing another $700 you didn’t have. All of these demanding “right now” situations have been my last two months and this doesn’t even account for all the county and city rescue animals I’ve fed and fostered, all the work deadlines and dealing with everything that everyone wants and then dealing with my own family.

So how do you stay on top of everything that is so demanding right now? What do you do when you are not on top of the mountain and you’re in the valley instead? What do you do when you feel disheartened or disappointed with this life? Do you look up and cry out to God to take you back to the mountain top again? Or do you use this time in the valley to draw closer to the One Who sees every tear that falls from your eyes? Only He can control all the chaos and bring something beautiful out of it all. As you bury your face into your pillow and cry, He rests His hands upon you and holds you as He buries your broken dreams into the sand and waters them with your tears and His. Then after a little sunshine and time alone, you understand the pain had its purpose to push you back to Him. Every trial and test made you rely on Him to bring beauty from ashes. And now with the right amount of sunshine you see the growth that was achieved while under all the pressure and a bud springs forth and blooms. Then another and another breaks through the surface and you stop to smell the amazing fragrance. That’s when you finally can look back and see why flowers never grow on the mountaintop. They only grow in the valleys, and the “now” has become the wow.