Being in the Desert

Many times for me lent is a spiritual renewal. There were church services more often. New spiritual practices. A renewed focus on God. Hearing more stories of Jesus that ended with a celebration. All of these helped drive me to new heights during lent. Over the last couple of years though that has not been the case. Instead I resonate with a old co-worker of mine. I always hated being told what to give up.

My co-worker surprised me one staff meeting a few years back when he has this feeling of dread radiating from him as we entered into a discussion of lent. He commented that this time of the year was the most challenging for him, and often his wife. The feeling of being in the desert seemed very real as he spoke about having questions arise, spiritual dryness, and temptations.

The last few years I have really understood that feeling. I still find the time to be generally renewing, but now see more desert than ever before.

One thing that cropped up for me while at the Catholic church was the pressure to give up something. I hated the idea that someone else was going to tell me what my relationship with God needed. The idea of sacrifice was great. I wanted to change things in my life to come closer to God. What I did not need was an arbitrary rule on how I needed to give up meat on a certain day.

The biggest problem for me was how this would play out in the office. I would not think about the days of the week (when you have an ever changing schedule it almost becomes hard to track days except Sunday) and end up bringing a meat sandwich on a Friday. Then someone would make a comment and start hinting at how I was failing. Many times it felt as though my boss would use these times to show others that I was not Catholic.

This caused me more resentment and anger towards the church than any growth with God. What I learned was that a tradition was more important than me with the group. I felt as though I was sitting with the Pharisees as they attack a rule that Jesus has broken. It was not to look beyond what was happening to the individual, but to demean. This was not the only tradition that I felt that way with. I wished that others would bring about the joy in obedience and not stress others failure to boost themselves up.

I felt the desert then as I struggled with conformity. This year I struggled with feeling futile. Right now I have a great support group and social network. I have a small group with a church that is growing fast. I have great friends that I get to hang out with outside of work. I have a great community around. What I feel the desert in is lack of growth at my church. I have been there over a year and a half now. All I have seen is families leave. We have yet to bring new ones in. This drop has played a burden but I have kept on.

Then a few situations collided and these failings came to the forefront. A crack in the dam finally broke and my insecurities rushed out. I now work to hopefully not need a dam, but in the mean time I examine the validity of these suppressed thoughts.

Through all of this a story that my pastor told me the other day really helped. It was of a grandfather who gave a child a pot of dirt. He told the little girl to water the pot of dirt every day without fail. She did for a long time with no results. Finally, she got sick of it and tried to give the pot back to the grandfather. He refused and told her to keep watering. She begrudgingly went back to water. Soon she saw a sprout.

My pastors point was that sometimes it takes a long time to see the fruit. Sometimes we want a new pot of dirt. In the end though God gave us this pot to water right now and He has a plan for it. Maybe we will never see the plant spring up, but it is our job to water.

There is nothing, while in the desert, that helps like getting a little bit of water.