When You’re In A Drought

I read a list of tips for teaching by Joyce Meyer years ago, around the time I started blogging. I don’t remember any of it now except one bullet point: Never teach anything you’re not also learning. I think of it every time I drag myself out of bed much too early, wrapped in an old quilt, with only enough sense about me to brew a hot, dark cup of Peet’s coffee, stumble into my favorite armchair–balancing my study Bible on the right arm–and fire up my laptop. What is the Lord teaching me that He would have me share?

This has been approximately my morning most mornings for the last couple years.

Until it wasn’t.

I don’t remember a particular morning where I decided I wanted to start sleeping in. I’m sure it was connected to being busy and out of town much of the summer. Every year the moment the final school bell rings my carefully carved out schedule takes flight. As Jon Acuff is fond of saying, “Discipline begets discipline.” Except my summer somehow throws that into reverse, stripping away all the framework I’ve erected to support my life the rest of the year. I don’t lament that process. To everything there is a season and I’m all about seasons that include more sleep (oh, and more time with my kids is cool, too). I don’t want to become a slave to my schedule. I will not be mastered by any thing (1 Cor 6:12).

At the same time, I’ve come to learn I work best with a little discipline. Marlena Graves says it well in A Beautiful Disaster, “It is good to keep up our daily rhythms. They keep us going when the wait is killing us. It is when we abandon our daily rhythms that we become unmoored. Maybe even frazzled.”

It’s been a dry summer waiting for rain for my beloved, drought-stricken California. Also for my soul.

Much of the last couple months I’ve felt disconnected. From my work. From people. From the Word. That’s not to say I haven’t had some moments. Actually, I had one of my most precious moments of all time in scripture during this dryness. It was a sudden summer downpour, but when it ended I still found myself in the same spiritual wilderness where I had pitched my tent.

In this desert place I have been bombarded with sin and temptation that I thought I had dropped on dusty trails long abandoned on my journey. I have been worn down and my words seemed to have dried up. All this in the midst of such a wonderfully, distractingly fun vacation season.

And, oh oh oh, I had me some FUN.

But inside I was cracked and crumbly and not entirely present with my outside. Have you ever felt this way? I don’t want it to sound like a crazy out-of-body experience. It was just, as I was having a genuinely great time, I was always aware of this niggling sense of longing in the background. Longing to be completely present, longing to fully connect, thirsting for more.

One of the things I’ve learned about these wilderness seasons (this was not my first nor will it likely be my last), is that much of the time I don’t recognize the terrain for what it is until I’m deep down the trail. Until my thirst is so terrible I can no longer distract myself from my need. So I call out to my God that controls the rain. I call out from my frustration with waiting and disappointment and longing. I call out from my fear. Sometimes He responds with a sudden downpour that soaks me to my marrow: the last morning of my twenties at the beach led into an intense divine conversation through Hebrews. But sometimes only a single drip for my parched lips:

And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. –Deuteronomy 8:2

Deuteronomy has been my favorite book of the Bible for a while, but recently it has become manna falling all around me; giving me just enough to get through another day. It’s no coincidence it has also been the series we’re working through at church Sunday mornings.

In Deuteronomy we find Moses at the end of his epic life, specifically after spending 40 years wandering in the wilderness with his people, God’s people, the Israelites. Their desert wanderings are drawing to a close and Moses’ leadership is being transferred to Joshua, whom God has chosen to lead them across the Jordan river and into the Promised Land. Moses exhorts the people with a passionate plea to remember the Lord’s care for them as a means to fuel their obedience, which will firmly establish them where God is taking them. They are called to remember, to hope.

There is a tension in this place where I connect with this story deeply. This is a snapshot of a people with a destiny not yet fully realized. Promises long anticipated on the edge of being fulfilled. This is a place for a people with a sordid past and a hopeful, if not somewhat nebulous, future. This is a place for me. Maybe for you as well?

The passage quoted above reminds me that my internal desert wanderings have purpose and significance in my journey. It is not that the Lord has forgotten about me, or is delaying me on a divine whim. Like His precious people, He will lead us through the wilderness for our benefit. When the sands of our hearts are churned up, what is uncovered? How do we react? In humility, realizing our acute need for a savior and leader? Or do we strike out in rebellion, attempting to blaze our own trails through the desert? If we haven’t learned to follow Him, even when He seems distant, we risk getting lost and dying in the desert; toes never touching the edge of possibility.

The wilderness is a training ground, not a punishment. Or sometimes it is for our discipline, but only as a wise Father disciplines his beloved child to teach her and strengthen her for what is to come (Deut 8:5).

And so, I do not despise this arid expanse of endless sand-soul. I have felt the Jordan lap my sun-baked toes. I am learning to trust the Spirit that has beckoned me forward to now will somehow get me across to the other side. This is not a comfortable place. While this land is not well-suited for flourishing, it will prepare us to tend our lives well in the place that is. The land that is promised. Wherever the Lord has chosen to lead us next.

Have you found yourself in a dry season? Don’t fight it. Don’t grumble and complain about the Lord’s poor care like the Israelites did–of which I am often guilty. Distrust only demonstrates our need for more wandering. How else will we learn to contently follow even when we can’t see what is ahead? Surrender to the process and know the Lord is using this time to show you what is in your heart. Will you obey Him despite the heat or not?

The Spirit reminded me the other morning, when I woke up again feeling cracked and dry, of the lyrics in the song Dawn to Dusk by All Sons and Daughters. May this be what is found in our hearts as we trek our own journeys through spiritual drought:

Tomorrow’s freedom is today’s surrender
We come before you to lay our burdens down
We look to You as our hearts remember
You are the only God
You are our only God

May our only God lead us every step of the way through the desert and bring us through the wilderness strengthened in our faith and prepared for what’s ahead!

Image credit: Christopher Cotrell, Flickr Creative Commons