Waiting in the Wilderness

Letting go sounds poetic until you don’t know what you’re making room for.

Over the last several years there are many things I’ve let go of, not always knowing what each void would be filled with. Parenting activities, church and other ministries, volunteering and participating in groups.

Many of these represent intentional pauses or breaks, while other areas of my life have ebbed accidentally.

Here, my blogging has been thin as my mind walks a wilderness with equally sparse vegetation. What can we share with others when our own souls refuse to be fixed or untangled? (Perhaps more than we know, but that’s another story. )

The faith to let go of the old is strong when we’re running towards a clear vision of the new. But sometimes only after letting go of the first trapeze bar, do we realize we don’t actually know where the next bar is. In those moments, instead of grasping our next season and confidently swinging to new heights, we find ourselves in the terrible freedom of a freefall.

Have you ever known the panic of uncertainty mingled with an odd sense that you’re actually safer because of it?

We are buoyed by the unlikely arms of soul searching questions:

If I miss the trapeze, if I’m not even sure I’m in the circus tent anymore, then what is my purpose? What am I waiting on next? Why am I here and how do I hear God’s voice yet again?

I realize in that moment that I’m waiting to be something, yet terrified that I’m chasing the wrong something. I fear obscurity, but also empty celebrity. I long for wisdom, but not the cost of finding it. I hope for a beautiful new thing, but fear it will break all too soon leaving me emptier than before.

Life comes at us so fast we fear we don’t have time to test the foundations, the beliefs, the driving motivation that guides us forward. We go from bar to bar because that’s what we think will keep us alive. Or it’s what we’ve known and it’s worked so far. Wandering is a waste of our time, we think.

But perhaps, we CAN afford the slow time to wander. Perhaps, in reality, the thing we can’t afford is to go as fast as we can with our eyes closed.

J.R.R Tolkien said, “Not all those who wander are lost.” I imagine we are all lost from time to time, wanderers included. But a wanderer might be closer to finding themself and their faith than the one who never examines his life, or walks through the wilderness.

Perhaps this is partly why Jesus says, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (Luke 9:24-25 NIV)

I wonder if the will to daily take up the cross, if the letting go of gaining the world, and even the losing of our lives happens in our wandering. Maybe we miss this death to ourselves if we never trip over ourselves so hard that we scrape our knees and pause awhile on the pavement in the pain.

Taylor Field, in his book, The Wayward Way, says:
“We want to short-circuit the wilderness time. We want to go from a confining experience directly to the Promised land in one easy step- instant freedom and purpose, with no wandering. Perhaps this is part of our problem.” / “In this kind of situation, you often don’t just need to learn. You also need to unlearn.”

So I’m still here in this place of letting go and not knowing yet what I’m headed towards. I’m not certain of my direction, but I’m certain I’m being refined. I’m confident that I need to unlearn many things, though I’m waiting to see which things God chooses to untangle. I’m still on my race with God, but finding that the straight and narrow sometimes looks more like a vast desert.

And still this one thing I daily relearn- God is with me. With me. Always. And that is why the waiting is worth it.