Abena had learned something about life that she could never have understood without living through it: every time it seemed she was going down, somehow, she ended up going up.
But she had not learned this lesson easily.
There was a season in her life when one disappointment seemed to follow another. Things she had hoped would work out did not. Doors she expected to open remained firmly shut. The more she tried to put her life back together, the more it seemed to slip from her hands.
Then came one evening when everything became too heavy.
Abena came home, closed the door behind her, and stood there quietly. She had spent the day pretending to be fine, smiling when she needed to smile and answering questions as though nothing was wrong.
But now she was alone.
She sat down and finally allowed herself to feel the pain she had been carrying.
Her eyes filled with tears.
She was tired of being strong. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of wondering when things would finally change.
For a moment, Abena looked at her life and could not see a way forward.
“What if this is where my story ends?” she wondered.
The thought frightened her.
Yet even in that painful moment, something inside her refused to give up. She remembered the other difficult seasons she had survived—the times she had thought she was finished, only to find herself standing again.
And slowly, Abena began to see her life differently.
Maybe going down did not always mean she was losing.
Maybe some valleys were necessary before the mountain.
As she looked around her, she also thought about people she had watched over the years. People who had reached their lowest points before experiencing some of their greatest rises. People who had been rejected, overlooked, disappointed, and pushed aside—only to eventually stand in places no one expected them to reach.
Their lowest moments had not been the end.
They had been turning points.
Abena remembered the words of Scripture about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone.
And suddenly, the message felt personal.
Perhaps being rejected did not mean she was worthless.
Perhaps being pushed down did not mean she would remain down.
Perhaps the season she was struggling through was preparing her for something she could not yet see.
That night, Abena did not have all the answers.
But she had something more important.
Hope.
She wiped her tears, took a deep breath, and decided that she would keep moving.
Because she had learned something she would never forget:
Sometimes, you have to go down to go up.
The valley is not always the end of the journey.
Sometimes, it is where the journey to the mountain begins.
And sometimes, the stone people reject is the very stone God chooses to make the cornerstone.
