Surviving Wilderness

This morning Tandy is on a cleaning jag, and all I want to do is stay in my PJs and read.  I will pay for that mindset later at some point.  Maybe today or maybe tomorrow, but it surely is in the near future.  This week has seemly been emotionally hard as I have had to adjust my thinking to my past, future, and encounters of others around me.  I find that there are many parts of my life that I just "overlook."  In my overlooking, I realize that there are emotional connections that I have not completely dealt with.  Make no mistake, when we do this they will arise or show up at some point to be dealt with again.  And the pain that comes with it will call into question; Why did I not deal with this the first go around?  When you begin that circle of thinking, it starts a vortex of emotions.  The what ifs, the why nots, the I wishes, and the if onlys.  In the spiritual and Christianese world we call it the Wilderness experience.  Where all temptations happen to get us to go back. 

My friends have been leading a Bible study in their home,  because they have found many Christians are walking in that atmosphere as they too are doing the same.  It is not like they know the way out or pointing to others as justifying dictatorship as I know the only and right way, but it is more of come walk with me, because I am right there too.  Last night they handed me two books that they are beginning to study in their group.  How timely they speak of Wilderness experiences.  This week I am realizing we have many wildernesses in our lives.  We try to clump them all together as one and as we do that, we overlook the importance of the experience itself.  Resulting in the uprise of the overlook that WILL happen down the road.  We also typically focus on the atmosphere of the Wilderness itself and lose sight that the focus should be on the getting out.  There have been times that I like the scenery in the Wilderness and have stayed in that place longer than I ever should have.  It usually comes by depression and napping with me.  Let me just lay here for awhile. Shut down and shut everyone and everything out.  There is no searching in this place, mercy in this place,  forgiveness in this place, but there is lots of anger, hopelessness, justification, and ego.  The statements of "I do not need them, I do need this, or I can do this on my own" come to mind.  

I am learning the Wilderness is meant to break you.  Break you not in the sense of into pieces, though it can feel like that at times, but break you WIDE OPEN.  It is the only way to get out, to be broken wide open.  Some of us chose to stay in the anger, hopelessness, justification, with our egos and go on living in the Wilderness.  We encounter those in our daily lives. People who are bitter by life events and situations.  People who justify their behavior because of the behavior of others.  We all have done it, but it is our choice whether we continue to stay there.  There is a statement in one of the books that rings true if applied to any Wilderness situation,  "...weeping  for pain and weeping for joy, because the two are often linked more closely than we can imagine."  It continues with the thought of suffering leads to the saving.  The only way out is brokenness to the point of WIDE OPEN.  Define it however you want. Christianese calls it, "Worship or crying out."  Those outside of that thought call it, "Honesty with self and transparency about weakness."  No matter the definition, WIDE OPEN is the path out.