Trackless Solitude II

The Spirit lights the way for her;
bramble and bush are pushed apart.
He lures her into wilderness
but to rejoice her heart".

In my Spiritual life, I have been lured into the wilderness, by the Holy Spirit, and if I keep blogging it would probably make a good topic to write about some day. But, in continuing a record of my personal journey, I found myself in a desolate wilderness… but obedience to the Spirit of God wasn’t really how I had gotten there.

In 1993, as I found myself at the bottom of the chasm I had fallen down into, decimated by my own choices, and deluded thinking, desperate for a change, the Spirit whispered my name. I wasn’t sure where I was, I had no idea where I needed to go, but certain that I would do well not to return from where I had been; I turned in the direction of His whisper.  He said my name again, and limping and wounded, I followed him in the dark, never having really experienced Him in this way before, but certain of who He was, and willing to see where he was leading.

I think if I am honest, I would have to say I was not much familiar with the Holy Spirit then. And I would be cautious before making claims of some casual and routine intimacy with Him now. It is mystery, because at that time, on that walk He was Spirit, yet he was so close I felt that I could touch Him. There in the darkness so thick, His presence around me, but unable to see anything but his light leading me out of where I was into a different unknown.
 
He lured me into the wilderness all right, and it was the right place for me at the time.  I was healed there. Not a quick, one shot, miraculous “rise up and walk healing”. It was more of a survey the damage, triage approach. A lengthy assessment of which wound is worst, what needs to be re-broken, “Wow this is pretty bad” approach. He cleaned and dressed my wounds, the water of his love, and antiseptic of truth were accompanied by the soothing ointments of his mercy and grace. He cut away tissue that just wasn’t going to heal, and broke some bones that I had tried to set myself some years before. Pretty much… I couldn’t move.  So Jessica’s phrase “but to rejoice her heart,” well let’s just say, it wasn’t the first trip, and it took a while to get there.

For 4 months, I lived in a stark and barren wilderness. It was a quiet and slow rehab.  I had never really heard of such a thing happening before, I mean to real people in the 20th century.  I thought trips into the wilderness with God only happened to people in the Bible. (Granted, there were quite a few of them, Moses, Rehab, Naomi, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, even Paul.)  I don’t know why I would have thought God didn’t do that anymore, but I guess I assumed that, while it was a literal event for them, it was merely to serve as a kind of a literary motif for us. You know, things God needed to have happen so that they could be written about for us in the Bible. But to my mind, that only happened to people in the “robe and scroll dispensation”, and I guess I figured that God didn’t really do that anymore.

Of course, I know now that he does. Short day trips, long weekends, extended periods. He’s even been known to lead me into wilderness and back, in less time than it would take to drink my morning coffee. But I never know when, or why, or for how long.  That was a very special period in my life, it changed me forever.  

Most of the time now, He keeps me on this side of the brambles and the bushes. So much of my time, led by the Spirit, is keeping to the familiar paths of my life, and that is not a bad thing. He can rejoice my heart in any setting, and heaven knows I need the Spirit for that, because I have a heart that is prone to murmur and criticize. Sometimes I feel like it may require more grace and His “anointing” to bring me a spirit of joy when I fold laundry, referee my children, or look at my living room, than it did when He took me into the quiet wilderness and into the closeness of His healing presence.