A COMPANION IN THE WILDERNESS by Jean Snow VanOrden
August 16th, 2010It’s been a wet summer: dreary, drizzly, soggy. Mushrooms over-carpet the lawn and a particularly gruesome assortment of fungi has replaced the decorative bark under the raspberry plants.
Ah, but thanks to the rain those raspberry plants are bowed down by the weight of ripe jewel-red fruit. This is the first year that I will have enough berries to eat on ice cream and waffles and to make a few bottles of jam. Berries make a good feast in the wilderness. Just ask the grizzly bears.
A wilderness is harsh and beautiful, cruel and rejuvenating, dangerous and instructive. In my last post I wrote about being at a place in my life where I expected to be in a comfortable and restful state of mind and spirit. But to my shock and amazement I am in a breathtaking and wide spiritual wilderness. This is both dismaying and exciting. I long for rest. However my past experiences have taught me that it is in my metaphorical wilderness that I am driven closer to God. God is my companion in the wilderness. God my father, God through His perfect Son, God through the whisperings of His Spirit.
God has occupied my thoughts my entire life. My parents were religious and took me to church where we had a joyful—sometimes painful–community of friends, teachers, and mentors. A fortress for nurturing faith. Both my parents believed in God and prayed with me and for me. After my mother’s death, as I sorted through one of her bureau drawers, I found a list she wrote of things she was praying for. She was not afraid to be assertive with God.
My parents were far from perfect but I adored them and still adore them. They had righteous priorities. Their love, their example, their humanity and benevolent authority made it natural and easy for me to relate to a loving personal God who has a plan and a purpose for his children in this mortal phase of their progression.
And so God is always with me. I’ve never been without God in this world and have less than zero desire to be without his companionship even though, clearly, that is always an option. God does not force himself on anyone.
In this new wilderness of my spiritual life I will never be alone. I will be accompanied by a guide, a physician, a mentor, a protector, a translator. He points out where there are reliable trails. He guides me over trackless terrain and around hazards. He shields me from hopelessness and despair. He heals me when I am injured by the “fiery darts of the adversary” and the injuries of my own failings. He translates inarticulate emotional storms and bestows clarity. And regularly, he withdraws into the dark and lets me experience the utter silence and loneliness of the wilderness.
I have in the past believed some false notions about God. Likely I still have many misunderstandings for Him to clear up as my life’s experiences soften, even break, my heart and allow Him to teach me. I have too many times tried to hide from him, but, no more.
I have experienced stages of growing up in God that brought different motivations for cleaving to God. There has been bargaining to get what I want. There has been the pleading for justice and for loved ones in peril. There has been witting and unwitting idolatry (of even good things) that get between me and God. I have made slow painful progress through foolishness, through pain, through fear, through ignorance, through illness, and grief. My sporadic and clumsy growth is fine with God as long as I am willing to keep on going forward across the great expanse that separates me from his ultimate desire for me. That expanse grows more beautiful and less threatening every day as I listen to His “still small voice” of peace encouraging me and lighting the landscape of my wilderness with beauty, knowledge, and moments of joy.
After feeling so wise and grown-up because of all I have been through and all I have learned, I am again a little child. I am resetting my position to zero. I am making room for God to fill me with himself and lead me safely through this new wilderness to a promised land that I can only dimly imagine yet crave with all my heart.