“Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us.” (Psalm 62:8)
When I went through a round of psychotherapy about four years ago, my
therapist instructed me to journal. I ended up doing so in a spiral notebook
for a month and a half. I had forgotten about it until I found the notebook in
a box recently. WOW. I was a psycho nut job. There were a couple of pages where
I had had a terrible day at work and vented in my journal with a ton of
profanity. The issues I was working through at the time were loneliness,
rejection, abandonment, and neglect. Um, sound familiar? (No worries, I know why
I deal with those, and now I know when they flare up.) I’ve been working through these recently again,
probably at a different level/layer, probably at a different intensity.
Perhaps the fact that I’ve been working through them yet again is
actually an answer to my own prayer at the end of that spiral-notebook journal:
“Thank You for my issues. Help me to work through them completely, and help me
to use them to catapult me into Your arms.”
That’s true, you know. Sometimes a crisis drives you to the Word, or
drives you to seek God’s face more intensely than you’ve ever sought it before.
Because you’re desperate. You need answers. You need freedom. You need peace.
You need Him, and you can’t rest until you find Him.
And sometimes we just carry stuff inside us that we don’t know is
there. The safest place to squeeze/pour it out is in God’s presence. And
sometimes God takes us to a special place where we can do just that.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her.” (Hosea 2:14)
I think I might be ripping off a flagship Bible verse of a local
ministry, but Hosea 2:14 can describe what happens when God pulls us
aside for a brief season and lets us work through stuff privately.
Today while I was talking through some worries/concerns/stuff with God,
He reminded me that a desert is SUPPOSED TO be hard. It’s supposed to have
extreme conditions – cold at night, unbearably hot during the day, no water,
cacti that contain their own water sources just so that they can survive there.
Why would a loving God create places like this? I believe it’s to remind us of
what a hard season is like.
From what I understand, even Jesus went through a desert. Matthew chapter 4 says that he was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When we talk about this passage, we usually focus on what happened AFTER He spent 40 days in the wilderness: The devil tempted Him, and He overcame those temptations. But what about during those 40 days when He was fasting? Did He work through some emotional stuff? Did He kick and scream? The Bible doesn’t say. (Regardless, He made it through that rough patch without sinning.) Jesus is God, but He’s also human, and I think maybe even He needed some privacy for 40 days. And when it was over, He began His ministry. I guess you could say He entered His “promised land.”
As you probably know, I’m nearing the end of a hard season financially.
I’ve dropped a full pants size (at least) because I can’t afford to buy as much
food as I used to. I’ve lost so much weight that I’ve discovered bones on my
skeleton that I didn’t know I had. I’m incredibly behind on several of my credit
accounts, and I’ve been praying that they won’t sue me. The best news I had today was that my current electric bill, after that huge heat wave that we
experienced in my area, is only $69 and some change.
But, speaking of change, I feel that it’s coming my way soon. I felt
God’s pleasure over me today as He said, “You’ve had enough.” I also felt like
He reminded me of how we’re always surrounded by so much harvest during the
fall season (which is just around the corner). I felt like He said that I would
see a “bumper crop.”
That would rock my world.
But meanwhile – as crazy as this may sound – I’m content here in the
desert, where I haven’t gone hungry, I haven’t been without appropriate
clothing, I haven’t lost my mind, and I haven’t died. (Or, hopefully, only my
“self” has died.) And – as crazier as this may sound – I might even miss it
after I leave.
MeepMeep is in heat (again) as I write this, so her feline expressions
are currently intensified. Her emotions are more aggressive than usual. And her
separation anxiety is pretty acute. When she freaks out, calming her down isn’t a formula, so I have
to see what kind of mood she’s in to see what will work. In this photo, she
joined me on the couch after I whistled at her. See how relaxed and adorable
she is here?
I feel like she’s gotten to know my character during her little crises.
She knows I’ll never leave her, she knows I want what’s best for her, she knows
I won’t give up on her just because she’s going a little crazy, she knows I’m
patient and gentle with her... and she knows I’ll put my foot down if I need
to. (I mean, Mama needs to sleep, right?)
I’m sure you know where I’m going with this analogy.
It’s in the hard, rough, dry places that we get to experience the parts
of God’s character that we may have never experienced before. When we’re
dealing with our mess, and when He rolls up His sleeves and comes alongside us
to help us clean it up, we bond with Him. Then after we make it through our rough
patch, we won’t want to leave His side, because we know we can’t make it through
life without Him.
The trials, the rough places, the deserts – they eventually end up catapulting
us into the arms of God.
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