The Desert, the Gentle Life & Turning 32

Celebrating 32! 

The Journey

Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

Though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug

at your ankles

“mend my life!”

each voice cried. 

But you didn’t stop

you knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world (desert)

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save

*******

Writing a birthday post has been like pulling teeth this year. My best guess is because I am in a desert: a season where everything is shifting but hasn’t settled yet. It’s hard to use words to describe the landscape and the view from here, things are still dusty.

Last year, I sensed I was entering a spiritual desert. I did not want to be there/here. It felt lonely, long and dusty. I wondered if I was in a desert because I can be drawn to scarcity, fear and hard things. I knew that nurture, love, and real care make me feel vulnerable and nervous but was I not learning to trust in the innocence and goodness of those things? Did I really need a desert to teach me? I wondered if this was a desert of my own making and if I would get trapped here. Back then I wrote,

Will it be a slow death of some part of me as I wander in this wilderness for who knows how long? What might die? My joy? My humor? Relationships? Hope? My thirst to grow and become or my belief that these things are good and worthwhile? I don’t want to be here. How did I get here? How do I get out?

Really, I just wanted out.

In the middle of these questions, I was reading the story of the Exodus. And a couple of non-descript, after-the-grand-story, verses stood out to me and helped me trust:

“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt (bondage). So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.”

The desert road was God’s good gift to His people. It hardly felt like it to them. He knew their fragile faith could not handle a different route. Their time in the desert was excruciating and long. But it was in the desert that God gave His precious people a new way of living in relationship with Him. Coming out of generations of slavery, even their bodies needed to be purified from their life in Egypt so they did not bring those things with them into new life. He did not leave his people alone in the desert. He was present to them, guiding them in the way they should go by the pillar and the cloud. 

I started praying that I would listen and look for the pillars and the clouds along my desert road.

A year later, I know the desert is necessary and good for me. In my thirty-one years I have accumulated a lot of junk (literally and metaphorically). While I clutch all of the things that make me feel ‘safe’ and ‘secure’, I have been unable to receive other gifts that lead me toward a life of love. So the desert has been/is a gift. I can say this honestly now. Henri Nouwen wrote about the movement from desert to garden. “To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert and change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden … A dry desolate garden can yield endless variety of flowers.” I didn’t go into it with gardening in mind, more like uncertainty and just a little trust. This desert-garden has been a place of learning to let go; to stop clinging to people and their opinions of me, books, experiences, plans, and fears. But along this way, I have found/am finding budding flowers and see the promise of a garden. In this coming year, I am committed to tending the garden in my desert.

It isn’t an easy (painless, pleasant) process letting go of favorite things that have, in many ways, comforted and “worked” for me for most of my life. I learned to mask these in a way that often got me approval from others but when all of that is stripped away, what’s left is this:

Perfectionism

People-pleasing

Silencing my voice

Jealousy

Co-dependency/Being needed

Sugar

Justifying the ugliness of my heart

Insatiable thirst for specialness

Pride

And … did I mention pride?

As I walk the desert road it has become a journey of taking off, discerning, repenting and detaching these from my true heart. It has been and still is (always will be?) messy. But even as I write this, I realize it isn’t just about losing things. It’s about losing these to find real life; life alive to God, others and myself. In place of these old things, I am finding new things. So while I’ve thought this past year has been about dying, I now realize it is about new life, growth.

Listening to and Honoring My Voice

I have been journeying toward this for the past thirteen years but this year I realized the central importance of voice for each of us. Finding and honoring voice - our formation, longings, fears, etc -  is a marker for recovery, for healing. I gave up my voice as a kid. Seemed safer without it I suppose. Silencing my voice went hand-in-hand with working hard to be "good" and lovable. But I lost something vital then and am only now reclaiming it. The neat thing is that as I learn to honor my own voice, it does not make me more stubborn or selfish (as I thought it might), it makes me kind and compassionate and more likely to listen for and honor the voice of others. This does not mean it has been easy for the people around me who are used to a “silent” me or a more-at-work-in-relationship me. It’s been a growing place. I have not lived into it perfectly but I am learning and figuring it out. As I learn to listen to my own voice, I can release the tight hold I’ve had on my self-concept. I am (just a little) more able to see not only the ways I am wounded but the ways I wound others.  

Honoring my body

The past year, my body offered me a wake-up call. I had no choice but to listen. It sparked a desire to honor my body and what it gives me for life. It’s kind of ironic that debilitating pain, a fragile and falling apart body, helped me see how disconnected I am from my body and offer a place of gently reconnecting to my whole self. So God-honoring. At times I have ruled my body like a task-master, sculpting and pushing it without rest or nurture. Other times, instead of listening to my body and what it needs, I have gulped down sugar or comfort food that allow me to keep numbing out. Since there isn’t a lot going on in a desert (or a lot of StarbucksJ), it has been a time to slow down, learn to listen and take care of this great gift of my body. Several times I have pushed myself, with determination into sugar detox, without success. Its interesting that in this desert, as I have started a less severe relationship with my body, the sugar addiction has faded almost naturally. A gentle rhythm of feasts and fasts. Of moderation. And of nurture.   

Gift of work

A career that is full of purpose and Kingdom work. I have blogged before about my dilemma with work and staying at home. I still live in that tension. But in the middle of the tension I recognize a gift. In the past year, particularly in the hardest parts of my health issues, though I felt desperate to not be working, now I can see it was one of the best things for me. On a practical level, it forced me to pull myself together 2 ½ days a week and go out of the house. It forced me to put on nice(ish) clothes and fix my hair. It also allowed me not to become consumed by myself – my pain and my fears. When I get to my office, I light two candles on the table and do so as a marker that I am transitioning into a different role than that of wife, mom, friend, complicated person. JIn that room, my own stuff is moved aside to hold space for the people sitting across from me. This was so good for me during that really hard time of waiting, aching, depression and wondering.  

Private practice has grown my faith, transformed my understanding and experience of diligent work as something good and central in our God-breathed humanness even if I would rather it all came on a silver platter. It has been a reminder that God’s grace with diligent effort is a beautiful thing. I am humbled and grateful to say that Birdsong is thriving. This beautiful work allows me to see God at work, healing and redeeming broken places in so many lives as well as be home more than at the office - both of these are so good for my heart.

Embracing an ordinary life

My heart has tuned in to a more “everyday spirituality”. Sacred in the ordinary. The desert is teaching me how to notice and look for the sacred in the ordinary, how to be sacred in the ordinary. Somehow it seems this is the antidote to my insatiable appetite for specialness. Dallas Willard writes that most Christians are so ‘ready’ and focused on dying that they are not prepared to live this gift of a life. A life with God is not (only) about a ticket out of here. I want to be satisfied and grounded in an ordinary life, marked by love rather than a pursuit to prove and validate my own specialness. Somehow, I think they are intertwined. So often I have snuffed out the candle of others (covertly, of course) so that my own candle can shine brighter. This is shifting. I don’t know much more than that.

           

A favorite quote: Frail dust, remember you are splendor.

A most beautiful surprise has come in this desert-garden: the beginnings of the gentle life. 

The desert changed my direction; one I thought I would hate. The willfull, determined, self-sufficient way I have lived does not work in the desert. And so I am learning a gentler, slower, way. It’s ironic. Over the past several years, I have blogged a few times about my longing for gentleness, my wonderings about how to craft it with my fierce and typically “effective” determination. Who knew I would discover this beautiful gift (not craft it) smack dab in the middle of a dry and barren desert? I am looking forward to discovering and living into the gentle life Jesus calls us to.

“Many of us long for gentleness in ourselves and others. It is like a treasure lost, buried under the pressures of an achievement society. Gentleness does not exclude strong and courageous stands. I can rest or work, give in to people or fight with them, both gently and violently. Gentleness is more than just relaxation and giving in; it is more than the opposite of fight, work, ambition. It is an attitude which affects and changes the style of my play or work, my fight or surrender, my admiration or rightful indignation. How I fight, argue, study, entertain, work or play then reveals the presence or absence of gentleness in my life…The gentle person is more free. She can take herself and the world as they are because she feels free to be herself and to let all things be with the same gentility. There is a friendly accord between her and her life situation. She does not feel she has to push herself (willful life) forward or hold herself back.” (Spirituality & the Gentle Life, Van Kaam)

As far as I can see, this year holds more desert walking. But maybe I am walking with more hope and joy and trust that this desert-garden is a great gift to me. As I keep discerning, repenting and detaching from the deformed ways I have built my life, I sense I am and will be freer to run the race marked out for me. I am excited at what I will learn and how I will learn to live into the gentle life in year 32.