Into the Wilderness

Several weeks ago, I started writing a post that I'd intended to share today as a kind of summing-up of the year.  I never quite managed to finish it. Now, if I'm honest, I'm glad I didn't.

(Not least because Ann Voskamp wrote something similar, but far, far better than I ever could. Take a look here.)

Instead, I'm going to pick up where I left off earlier this month.

(For those of you who missed it, you can get up to speed with the last post here)

I mentioned the last time I wrote that I hoped I'd be telling a rescue story soon. And I am.

Except it wasn't quite the type of rescue I'd anticipated.

It's all still a bit of a jumble in my head, and my heart, and everywhere else, so I hope you'll bear with me and let me tell the story.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin.

Late on Saturday night, as I picked up my Bible and thought about what to read, I felt nudged in the direction of Hosea.

Confession time: it wasn't the first time recently I'd felt that nudge. It'd happened a few times, but I'd always brushed it aside. I'd arrogantly assumed that it wouldn't really have anything relevant to say.

(I know.) 

After all, what could the story of a man and a prostitute possibly have to do with anything to do with me?

(Again, I know.)

But, in the absence of any better ideas, I thought I'd give it a go.

I'd got part of the way through chapter 2 when it hit me. That was me. And the more I read the more I could relate to how I'd been living.

I'll spare you the specifics of what is, after all, not the most flattering of comparisons in the world. You can read it for yourself.

Suffice it to say that I'd completely missed the point. Somehow I'd come to think that I deserved to get what I wanted. That somehow I'd earned it. Or else that it was all to do with my own efforts. I hadn't. And it definitely wasn't.

I'd completely neglected the fact that all of the good stuff - that good stuff that I'd only been complaining of being robbed of a couple of weeks ago - wasn't really anything to do with me to begin with. Obviously, they were in as much as they were things that were part of my life. But they weren't mine to keep hold of, or have taken from me. Not really.

I remember conversations where I had been talking some of this through with people, and wondering out loud whether things had gone wrong because I'd mis-heard what God was saying, or the timing wasn't right, or it was some kind of spiritual attack.

Not being God, I don't know for certain. But something occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before:

What if I'm the one getting in the way?

What if it isn't any of those things? What if my attitude, my arrogance, my failure to acknowledge God as the source of every good thing in my life was preventing me from experiencing His best for me?

What if, in the times of getting what I wanted, what I had hoped for, and then losing it again, He'd been leading me into the wilderness, waiting to speak to me, to teach me, to bring me back to where I should have been all along?

What if what I needed was a bit of discipline?

Yes, it's hurt. But discipline does. This was the fairest kind: The God-given kind, very firm but somehow still drenched in love and kindness.

And it's in that wilderness that I've found myself on-and-off over the last six months, then more consistently for the last two. Where I do all of my crying and screaming and shouting and sulking. And then I finally sit down and shut up long enough to let Him speak.

Now I remember that the best bits, the biggest leaps forward in my faith-journey, have all happened in the wilderness. Because it's there that I'm broken enough, that my guard is down enough, to let Him speak tenderly to me. And then I call to mind the saying I've heard so many times: that it's in the valleys, not on the mountain-tops, that things grow.

Even now, as I'm writing this, I know I'm still holding on tight to ideas and expectations of how things will turn out. Promises that He's spoken, where I've already decided how, and when, He'll fulfill them. I'm pretty sure He's got other ideas, and I'm willing to bet that His way is far better than anything even my overactive imagination could conjure up.

So, right now, as my fingers hit the keys and spell out these words, I'm letting them all go. Every last one of them. My dashed hopes and failed expectations. The plans I'm still holding on to, as if I had any right to decide.

Once. And. For. All. 

Gone.

I want to be a blank canvas again. Only this time I don't want to be the one marking out the shapes, or picking the colours. Clean slate. No more trying to wrestle control. Instead, I'll try to listen, and wait, and watch, and see where He wants me to go, and I'll be brave. And I'll acknowledge every tiny sparkling glitter-speck of blessing and gift along the way - not just the big ones, and not just when it's worked out the way I wanted it to. And I'll be thankful for them all. Every last one.

Essentially, I'll let Him do His job, and I'll do mine.

I don't know how long I'll be in this wilderness-place. But now I'm willing to wait. Because I know that whatever's on the horizon, and whatever shape it takes, it'll be worth it in the end. It always is, with God.

And I think that's a pretty good way to start the new year.