Favour in the Wilderness: A Reflection

Note: I've been mulling this over and wondering if it's too melodramatic or too interior to post on Bookmeal...there is a lot that I have left unsaid and what I have said is messy and rather open-ended. But, in the interest of honesty, and because this is my first attempt at a post in three months, what the hey! Here goes, for better or worse...


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My last post was dated May 3rd. Yes, well. This summer I have been uprooted from my "country life in the Canadian prairies" (as per my introductory blurb on the right) to - what shall I call it? Urban sophistication in Alberta's downtown core? Right now it feels more like "self-doubt straddled on the fence between here and there." Time will tell.

I lived in Niton Junction, Alberta, Canada for eight years. That is the longest I have ever lived in one place. The second longest stretch was seven years in San Diego, from birth to age 7. After that, my life has been snipped into tidy three-year packages, give or take. I have been uniquely shaped by each place I have lived, but perhaps on an even deeper level I have been shaped by the act itself of perpetual home-hopping. Over the years I have had difficulty defining home. Where is it? What is it?

I moved to the country with all the passion and dreamy-eyed wonder of a newly-married twenty-eight year old (sort of) artist, a tender shoot just beginning to rise out of the rich soil that had nurtured and nourished me during my five years at Regent College in Vancouver. I had plans. I had technicolour dreams for our little acreage life in the middle of nowhere.

But it didn't happen. During the last four years in particular, I watched so many of those dreams die, one by one by one. I felt like little pieces of me were dying too, and I grieved. Over and over again, I seemed to hear one word from God: No. I was crushed under the weight of it, defined by the pain of it, and at times embittered by the unfairness of it.

Over time and for reasons I don't fully understand, the good earth of my previous growth had become a parched and barren land, and I was a bruised reed. I had ceased to produce seed. I was so hunched over I no longer was able to provide shade for others.

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; 

   I will lead her into the wilderness 

and speak tenderly to her."

Hosea 2:14

God in his mercy met with me in the desert and spoke words of comfort and life. He spoke of his faithfulness and his love. He also showed me that some of his No's were in fact only Not yet's. There was still hope, a future for me in his keeping.

This is what the LORD says:

 “The people who survive the sword 

will find favor in the wilderness;    

I will come to give rest to Israel.”

~

"They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; 
they will rejoice in the bounty of the LORD-- 
the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, the young of the flocks and herds. 
They will be like a well-watered garden, 
and they will sorrow no more. 
Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. 
I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. 
I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty,” 
declares the LORD.

(Jeremiah 31: 2, 12-14)

I don't presume to say that the not yet has arrived and become now. Whether I like it or not, it's the nature of pilgrimage and the Christian life to keep moving, to keep pressing on toward. Who knows what trials this new leg of the journey holds? But what I can say for sure is this: In February, just six short months ago, God said Yes. Aside from the geographical details of moving our family of six from Niton to Edmonton, it remains to be seen exactly what else he was saying Yes to at the same time. Opportunity, sacrifice, joy, pain, brokenness, hope? A helping of each, I'd imagine. I'm a little less romantic this time, or at least trying to be. And I think that's okay - it's not cynicism or pessimism, but a willingness to let God define my adventures a bit more broadly than I would if I were in charge...Which I'm not...Which is the point - a lesson I learned in the desert.

~
Becky
Edmonton, AB