Difficulties prepare you for victory. Disease prepares you for health. Confusion prepares you for clarity. Hopelessness prepares you for purpose. Failure prepares you for success. Poverty prepares you for prosperity. Criticism prepares you for acceptance. Pain prepares you for joy. Anger prepares you for forgiveness. Ignorance prepares you for the truth. Loneliness prepares you for love...
-- Iyanla Vanzant

In this Lenten season, you travailed thoughtfully and intentionally inside the jungle of your personal wilderness. You looked under rocks; dug through old and unfertile clay soil; and uprooted weeds and other life forms you couldn’t name or provided no fragrance, appeal, or function. You’ve convened and struggled with the wild animals of emotion, ego, and attitude, and on some days, you lost the fight and came up even surlier than before. Other days you conquered, or at least tamed, the beasts and attained complete control over these wayward creatures. Today, you’re grateful for the work you’ve done, and the clearing out of this wilderness is just up ahead.

But don’t leave the wilderness empty-handed. There are treasures you’ve found that you can’t leave behind.

In the storm, when you dug through fear, you found feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt; you found the triple threats of shame, fault, and guilt. You uncovered disappointments of long ago and the mistrust that comes from harboring this disillusionment. Underneath all this was a lack of faith and belief that God loves you just as you are and placed you on this earth to fulfill a purpose. But you also discovered the power of surrender and gave up critical self-judgment in favor of self-acceptance and compassion for your imperfect Self. Consequently you recovered faith, both in God and your Self, and now you know all is well and will be well even when you can’t see it.

In the deep of the wilderness, you peeled away the layers off loneliness and found years of drama strategically created to mask or divert the loneliness, and dead, dry bones kept alive via the strands and threads of your longings. Peeling back desperation, you found depression, and stripping away depression, you found raw and overwhelming feelings of abandonment that stemmed from some distant experience and the vague memory of it. But, then you discovered you weren’t really alone, that Jesus sat with you at every moment, and, that when you sat quietly, you could actually hear Jesus calling you to come from behind your lonely places, filling you with every single thing you needed to feel in good company. You found the ability to transform your thinking about being alone and appreciated that periods of solitude were opportunities to meditate, reflect, and be still so that you could begin to welcome other people and things into your life without involving them in scenes and situations.

While wandering around the dry lands of your valley, you took the top off your disorder and found disobedience to God and the laws of nature. You looked at your mistakes and carelessness and saw that they were marked by impatience and imbalance. At the bottom of the barrel you again discovered fear – fear of failure, fear of success, fear of abandonment, and a busload of other worries. But in the chaos, you realized how everything is connected in some way and discovered that maybe there was no need to start everything over; perhaps you could piece together parts to create order. You accept that you must be accountable for and to these parts which ultimately requires instituting inactive, yet available, discipline and real love for your Self. You know now that there is an alignment between the order of your issues and proximity to God and you are now convinced that harmony can exist in this life of yours.

You found gratitude where there was bitterness; healing where there was hell; and discernment where nothing was clear and everything bore a question. Pack your bag full of what you found; it’s all useful for the rest of your life’s journey.

Sadiqqa © 2007