Valley of Dry Bones

Valley of Dry Bones

We sat across from each other—our sick four-month-old in my lap, our sick toddler having a meltdown in the living room, a delicious meal before us that I had not prepared.

My shorn husband looked so unlike the fierce protector I have known and loved that I had to fight back tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I am sorry life’s so hard.’

He swallowed. Our wet eyes met like hands across the table. ‘I’m sorry, too.’

By sheer willpower alone, we got our girls to bed. My husband put a pallet of blankets on our toddler’s floor, so he could be there in case she had another bad spell of the croup during the night.

‘Let me sleep there,’ I insisted. ‘You’re still recovering.’

‘I won’t be able to sleep at all if I can’t hear her.’

I nodded and tiptoed back downstairs. I pressed my fingertips to the table where we’d sat and stared through the window into the snowy darkness as if I could see directly into the face of God.

I could feel the tension coiled in my spinal column, though my shoulders were weighted with fatigue. ‘You must meet us here,’ I said. ‘You must meet us here.’

I prayed this over and over again, my voice both plea and command. I interceded for our family for a few more minutes and then stretched out across the bed in the playroom, too tired to cry.

—

It was no small miracle our girls didn’t have coughing spells during the night, allowing our family to get a decent night’s rest for the first time since my husband’s emergency brain surgery.

Over breakfast, I told my husband the previous night was the lowest point I’d ever reached.

He said it was the same for him. We’ve walked through trials before, but we’ve never walked through anything like this.

Then I recalled that unusual passage in Ezekiel 37, where God breathes life into an army of old bones, making them walk again:

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

These past two weeks have felt like we’re being stripped down to the very bone of who we were before my husband”s surgery.

It’s been a painful, life-changing process, and yet I pray that once this stripping has taken place, our skin—and our very breath–will be a closer representation of the heart of God.

What did God teach you during your hardest trials?