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Friends United Meeting |
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December 1997
Wilderness Journies: When Life as You Know It Grinds to a Halt
By Sara Beth Terrell
In the course of life we can suddenly find ourselves in a pathless and
inhospitable place that feels bereft of companionship, comfort, direction
and often hope. The biblical image is wandering in the wilderness. In
the wilderness, "normal" life as we know it ceases to exist.
While leading a spiritual nurture group recently, I asked the participants to center down and allow an image to arise that expressed life for them in the moment, what it "looks like where you are now." When we shared later, a woman I'll call Becky described the real-life memory of scuba diving in the mouth of a particular river. The water there is so murky you can see nothing in front of you, she said. The darkness is so complete that a flashlight is worthless. In the gloom on the bottom of that river, where tide changes can catch you and pull you out to sea or drive you suddenly inland, you don't always know which way is up or out. You know the bottom and other objects by feel alone, she told us. Getting out alive is no small feat; having survived is exhilarating. In her prayer image, she placed herself on the bottom of that river, all alone, when a sudden current eradicated all sense of direction. In other words, she was in the wilderness.
We get the metaphor of wilderness times from the Hebrews' wanderings in the desert after being delivered from Egypt. Like the Hebrews crossing over the Red Sea, we often enter wilderness when we pass some new boundary in our own lives. Like them, we find that freedom is more than an event. Freedom requires transformation, and transformation hurts.
For the Hebrews after the Red Sea, life as they knew it came to an abrupt end. The new land they thought was close at hand required new people to enter into it. They wandered until the transformation was complete. We do, too.
Moving into New Territory
The experiences most of us find common to the wilderness are the absolute loss of normality, the disorientation, the fear, the anxiety; the life experiences that land us there, however, are rather diverse. Jesus was driven into the wilderness after hearing a call from God to be Messiah. Before he could live into that new and exciting potential, he had to wrestle with what it all meant and with the nature of who he was. He had to face the full darkness of his (and our) humanity with no sense of God's presence. We may hear a new call, experience a new leading, or simply get a new job that brings new challenges. We set out with excitement, perhaps, and find that the road to glory we pictured detours through wilderness fairly rapidly, often bringing opportunity to know the depth of our own humanity, as well.
Sometimes "normal" life passages plunge us into wilderness. A new bride expecting to live happily ever after finds that people suddenly treat her differently, or that her husband expects things she hadn't anticipated. A man learns he's going to be a father, and his delight is undercut by fear of losing freedom as well as internal pressures he hardly understands, much less can verbalize. A mother looks forward to the children leaving home so she can have a life of her own, only to find herself wandering aimlessly through the dark house. A man anticipates all the fun things he'll do after retirement and discovers he doesn't know who he is without the job that defined him and gave his life schedule and purpose.
Sometimes life as we know it disappears in an instant because of circumstances beyond our control. A friend's husband was diagnosed with cancer when her son was a baby. It took her three years before she ceased to feel like the ground shifted underfoot with every step. Losing a job upsets the foundation of many people's lives. Losing a spouse topples even more. I have three friends who are currently reeling from the break-up of committed relationships. Becky, the scuba diver, had lost two spouses to accidental deaths and thrown herself into caring for others and efficiently organizing groups and causes. When I met her the busy-ness had ceased to work, but for her it was much easier to ask what was wrong with her that she could no longer focus and be efficient than to face the depth of grief and aloneness she felt.
Anger at God
Anger at God is another experience common to those who walk the wilderness. I remember one night a couple of months after a move I had tried hard to make the best of; I lay on the floor and yelled at God. I knew very clearly that I would be O.K. as long as I stayed in relationship, refusing to slam the door and run out. In the past I had slammed the door in rage at God and run away-only to have to work hard to open it once again. It's hard for me to watch today when other people slam the door on God in rage, but I've learned the hard way that I can't give them my own answers. Trying to give them answers, I drive them further from me as well, while simply listening and being there keeps a door open that may allow them to open the one to God one day.
No one of us knows what anyone else needs to learn in the wilderness. No one of us can tell another how to get out. Be wary of those who try. From hearing lots of stories, I think the path begins to lead out of the wilderness when "all our strivings cease," to take Whittier out of context. When we stop trying to make life be what it was; when we stop trying to make God give us what we want; when we stop trying to make anyone or anything bend to our will; when we accept life on life's terms and ourselves, and God, as we are-then we have begun the journey out of the wilderness.
New Life
Our path through the wilderness, like the unknown one the Hebrews followed, does lead to new life if we do not give up in despair. God may feel mostly absent, putting in appearances only at crucial moments to bring water from a rock or manna from the skies. When I can say to myself, "This is the wilderness; I'm supposed to be confused; God is supposed to feel distant; I only have to take the next step, nothing more," then the load lightens, and I walk on a while longer. I am convinced, though, that God has many good things in store for us if we can keep on with as much faith as we can muster.
Three years ago I was trying desperately to convince God to show me the path, to give me direction in the particular wilderness in which I knew I was lost. My eyes landed on a passage from Isaiah I'd put on the wall: "Behold I am doing a new thing; this moment it breaks forth! Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." (Isa 43:18-19) I sat in prayer with the passage, begging God to show me the way being opened for me even now. Rarely have clear words come to me in prayer, but that day I heard a voice proclaim: "I AM the Way in the wilderness." Of course! Emancipation from the wilderness is not about finding a path and getting out, it's about choosing to stay in relationship to God no matter what, about choosing to place my whole life and being in God's hands, about ceasing to strive for what I want and think I need and receiving the bounty God is even now-even in the wilderness-providing. Ah! I thought, the answer Jesus himself came to in the wilderness: to throw oneself always back on God, no matter what.
At the next meeting of Becky's group, I felt a leading for us to pray Psalm 139. The phrase that spoke to her was "for the darkness is as light to you." As she prayed the passage in the silence, she glimpsed a flicker of light and had a sense of Jesus' presence; she felt him assure her that if she would simply turn toward the light whenever she caught even the faintest flicker, that the light would grow until the darkness around her was light. It is that constant turning toward the Light that gives us our bearings in ALL of life.
Sara Beth Terrell leads spiritual nurture groups and retreats through Finding the Way Ministries. She resides in Mars Hill, North Carolina, with her husband Jim Hood and children Julia and Daniel.
Copyright (c) Friends United Meeting 1997
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