Coronavirus Wilderness

Jesus. That man who followed His Father willingly into the wilderness. No protesting. No whining. No kicking and screaming. If He wasn’t God, I would assume the author of his story creatively left out some really critical details like those when he authored the story. Instead, we read that Jesus open-handedly gave up the pleasures and earthly nourishment of life for 40 long days in the wilderness, where He communed with His Father and battled with the Accuser. Jesus clearly enjoyed life’s pleasures. After all, He is the Lord of the wine, and the most generous host. He loved a good party. From what I read in the bookends of the Bible, He still loves a good party and will host the most extravagant one throughout eternity. He also masterfully held in tension the poles of this life. Living and dying. Celebrating and lamenting. Feasting and fasting. Fullness and emptiness. The garden and the wilderness. Then the garden became the wilderness.

My first wilderness experience as a Christ-follower lasted ten painfully long years. Unlike Jesus, I didn’t volitionally choose to follow my Father into the wilderness but went kicking and protesting. I never would have gone willingly. I think my posture may have contributed to my lengthy stay in that desolate land. I demanded my comforts from God. I thought I was living faithfully…holding up my end of this deal.

Hello to the formulas which suffocate the life breath of relationship.

I cried out to my Father to provide those things I thought would bring me joy. Yet he saw how they were stripping me of the joy He’d created me to enjoy. After many long years, I grew apathetic and indifferent toward God. What a fighter I must have been to resist the delicacies of love He was offering me for ten years. By His grace, I finally awoke. It seemed momentarily my eyes opened to how I had crafted and clung to the idol of financial security as if my life depended on it for peace and security. It had ruled me those ten years, and it wasn’t a kind ruler.

It took the scathing emptiness of the wilderness to awaken me to the ways I had crafted this idol to ensure a comfortable life. Unbeknownst to me, I believed I was entitled to a comfortable life. I believed this life with God was a formula rather than a love story. Only a radically lover would wait on us as long as our Creator does.

Like many Americans, I desired the good life far more than the Better Hope (God). In Out of Zion, I wrote upon encountering God in my addictions, “This God was the only object I had centered my life around who didn’t abuse the authority I had given Him over me but invaded my entire being with His goodness and love.” I couldn’t have imagined as a 21-year-old new Christ-follower that I would spend the rest of my life awakening to my idols and surrendering them and their abuse of power. I also wouldn’t have imagined that I would so stubbornly protest surrendering gods who strip me of my humanity, my image-bearing beauty. 

Thank you, wilderness, for leading me out of entitled hungers to the one who promises to satisfy my hungers and restore my humanity.

The sigh of surrender

In tears and brokenness, I finally waved my white flag and offered my idol of financial security to God. As he so mercifully does, He crushed it for me. On impact, I tasted freedom and rest in my soul I’d never before enjoyed. The space that idol had occupied was now available to the Peacemaker.

Over the past 26 years, I have learned of the richness of the wilderness. I have grown from that protesting young lady into a woman who chooses to be in the wilderness with the Beloved Father, Son, and Spirit, embracing whatever scathing emptiness must come in order to help me see them more clearly as the lovers they are. God has transformed me from a woman clamoring to fill the emptiness in the wilderness with worldly comforts to one who embraces the fasting which grows my hunger for Him. The greatest gift of the wilderness has been the deep intimacy, communion and union with God forged out of emptiness. 

So here we all are, in the COVID-19 wilderness. I think it’s safe to say, this is not one any of us would have willingly walked into. After 27 years of apprenticeship to Jesus, I’ve grown skilled at fasting from worldly comforts in the wilderness, longing to create more space in my soul for God to occupy through the fasting of these things. But, something within me is restless and resistant to my wilderness usual. 

I’m feeling the urge to escape all of the emotions stirring in me from the numerous realities the Coronavirus has introduced into my life. My grief, my concern for others, the losses—perhaps my nervous system feels overloaded. Certainly my heart does as it burst with tears during my workout the other day.

So my usual love and practice for reading deep theological and spiritual texts has been largely replaced with historical non-fiction audiobooks. My capacity to absorb information has waned. My usual practices of solitude and silence in the wilderness have been replaced with the sounds of anywhere from five to ten healthy and alive (thankfully) family members milling about in our home. I escape into Blacklist at night rather than reflect on my day through the Examen. And I’m very aware of the undercurrent in my soul which is screaming escape.

I’m being gentle with myself and my restlessness, which is a victory over my self-critical inclination. I’m being curious about my desire to escape and invite Jesus into that place of discomfort. As I walk outside each morning rather than enjoy my usual rhythm at my gym, I ask Jesus to strengthen me to be in this space with Him and surrender my numerous tactics to emotionally high-tail it out of this wilderness. I ask Him to give me His eyes to see and His capacity to love. I don’t understand all of the undercurrents which are powerfully pulling on me in this COVID-19 wilderness. And more than ever, I’m so grateful to have Jesus, the wilderness guru, here with me.

My curiosity about how you might be walking through the wilderness is peaked. I find the fellowship of others amidst this season of social distancing to be priceless. I wonder who God is to you in the wilderness? How are you responding to the deep waters in your soul as you wander through the COVID-19 wilderness?