Into the desert

I've grown more in the past 3.5 weeks than i have in the past two months. Ive hit a desert patch. Over the past couple of weeks i was reminded what the desert means. I really draw from the desert, as a metaphor for our lives. It reminds me of a time in my life where things were empty, hard and I felt alone. I was angry at God, if he loved me how could he let this happen? Mother Teresa once said " One of the worse of all sufferings is to feel unwanted, unloved, and lonely." Mother Teresa was a woman who found the blessing in suffering. She believed, that unlike being forsaken by God, that God was right there with us because Jesus came to feel our pain, God feels our pain.

Don't try to ask why .. all i know is that if we allow it to, the desert does something to us. The desert is a place where we get tested. It's hott, things are dying all around from the heat, you thirst and you hunger, but you don't find. There is no love, no friendship, there is no joy, there is burden.You cry out but your voice echos, you are alone. You will dye in the desert.  But then you look up and pray, and all of a sudden it begins to rain. IN this desert where the heat seems unforgiving, when it seems like nothing could happen, but you collapse in exhaustion, because you can't find another way, you cry out to God and IT STARTS TO RAIN. We see that God is the one who steps in when no one else can save us. You see in the midst of even suffering we can find life. Just like the cactus, that survives the heat, when you cut a cactus open it is alive inside, it is moist and sustained amidst its environment. That is like holding on to the truth of God, letting him sustain us in desert seasons of our lives. I remember these precious words

" I will lead her into the desert, but I will speak to her heart."
Trust that God provides all you need to get you through. In fact that is exactly what the desert has taught me, to learn HOW to need God. Believe me when I say, it takes something that completely breaks us and rocks our world to learn this.  Ive learned that this spirit of independence is what we need to get rid of because it always leads us in the wrong direction.

At church this week I prayed for God to hang onto me, that he would help me not let go of him. Then I got this image of Jesus climbing up a mountain, and I was hanging on tightly to his backpack while he was continuing to carry me.  I could hear God saying, " I understand it's hard, but just hang on to me." And then I remember that I cant make this journey without him.

If you can't make peace with pain and love in this life, then you'll always be too scared to love fully. You'll only give part of your heart to God. And you'll be stingy with your love for others. This isn't heaven remember, this is earth. But together and through God, we can still make something beautiful out all that life throws us.

THIS IS SO TRUE and that fact that someone wrote this blesses me.

"Compassion means to suffer with. We can learn to be with others in their suffering and with ourselves in our own. The opposite of compassion is apathy. To be apathetic to the suffering not only of ourselves but also that of others is the worst kind of hell any one can suffer from, it’s inhuman, it creates our loneliness and it creates our isolation."

In some ways we go to the desert to get sanctified. When we get sanctified we have to take a good hard look at out short comings and weak spots. I'm not ok with failing, failing sucks, In fact I confess I have a tendency to be a perfectionist but if we cant come to terms with failure, we will never be able to look in the eye the reasons why we fail. We will never change. And if you don't learn how to change you will die, not literally but in the sense of your being. When we become too comfortable in life, we might as well call ourselves, the walking dead. Alot people don't want to take the challenge that life calls us to fail to realize that a lack of challenge is not healthy, neither is masking your pain, and its not being alive. I recently thought my goal was to be more sanctified, when really what my prayer all along should have been was .. Lord make me more compassionate. I want God to make me more compassionate, even when I don't feel the love, or when I try to help people and they attack me, or judge me. I've decided I just need to pray for more compassion and more of the love of God to step in as life asks more of me. Together ... trials and love produce gold.  The deeper you go into the desert, the closer you are to becoming gold. Gold is strong, it takes high heat to for, but once it forms .. it takes high heat to melt it again. In a similar way our trials hard press us, they are like that same heat, but it makes us stronger. God is making something out of you. Although the lesson is carved out of pain, he is making us as bold as lions. So take courage, God is after giving you peace, he wants to make you strong so that your not just clinging for your survival but thriving in all seasons of life. We can't run from the desert, we can't avoid it. The only way to survive and the only way out is through God. A heart will starve in the desert without him.
He allows us to be weak, because he is powerful.  In the desert we find the most deep-seated side of God's love.

"Who is this coming up from the desert(wilderness), leaning on her beloved." Solomon 8:5

"Those of you who are sick, when things are hard, take refuge in Christ’s heart. There my own heart will find with you strength and love." - Mother Teresa