I won't bore you with the details, but something we've spent six months waiting for is dissolving into dust and falling through our fingers.
Admittedly, it was a high-commitment gamble from the beginning, but we did it, with a willingness to wait to see what would happen.
Nothing has happened, but the writing is on the wall, so we are adjusting. And it's easy to wonder, "What was all that for? Six months of silence in the high-desert of New Mexico?"
One of my clients tentatively answered the question.
"Well, you finished the book."
Death to Sparkleprincess.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Sparkleprincess is one week away from heading to her copy editor.
I've known since I was 13, that I wanted to be a writer. I've started a hundred books, even finished a draft of two, but I've never gotten this far on any of them.
It's fair to say the dead silence and extreme loneliness of our high-desert wilderness deserves the credit. This isn't the first time I've felt God kick my distractions out from under me, so I'd focus on the most important thing.
But this is the first time I've actually done it, all the way.
But that's not all.
New Mexico has worked me over internally in a way I hoped for. I can see it as the pages of this manuscript unfurl before me. In the book, I tell stories about the first half of my life, who I was, how I handled things, and frankly, it's a little embarassing.
I was bossy, controlling, subversive and proud. That's not all I was but I can see those threads weaving through the narrative.
Nobody in this book gets hung out to dry, except for me, but that's also kind of the point. Sparkleprincess dies in the book (kind of), and that's the function of midlife. It's classic wilderness experience, where we change from one thing into another.
God famously uses wildnerness seasons, with their isolation and silence, to refine us and our relationship to him. Moses spent 40 years out there. The Apostle Paul spent three. It's character shaping and preparatory. I can see clearly how the solitude of New Mexico has cultivated more humility and dependence in me.
I am not the same person I was when I sat down here, with nothing but hope and a bad first draft.
How do you survive the wilderness?
By acknowledging that though we think we're independent, capable, bright and cute, we're not. As John the Revelator says,
You say you are rich. You think you have become wealthy and don’t need anything. But you don’t know that you are really miserable, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. Revelation 3:17 ESV
That's not a burn, it's a testimony about our dependence on God, from someone who knew him personally.
I don't think I would learn that lesson any other way, because outside the wilderness I can distract myself from anything that would teach it.
The lesson is not complicated.
It's simple and hard.
Stillness.
Quiet.
Listening.
Obedience.
Certainly, that can be replicated outside the wildnerness, but for stubborn little sheep like me, I've got to be cornered to get it.
So as we walk into yet another season of giant unknowns, I'm theoretically doing it with more confidence. Not in myself though, I was never was all that capable, but God is.
What's your wilderness?
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