Have You Ever Felt Lost in the Wilderness?

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For about the last ten years, I feel like I have been lost in the wilderness.

Not surprisingly, it started around the time my marriage fell apart. Sometimes I was conscious of it, like I felt cold and couldn’t see anything and I could hear wolves growling in the dark.

Other times, life just seemed normal, but I think I was still in the wilderness. Just enough light broke through the trees to make it feel normal for stretches at a time. I thank God for being there the whole time, for giving those little flashes of light in the wilderness.

In those years, I’ve had some humbling experiences and exalting experiences. I’ve made bad choices and some good ones. I’ve had some unbelievable wins and some humiliating failures.

Along the way, I met a lot of beautiful people I would not have met if life had gone the way I planned.

They helped me get to where I am now…

I met a remarkable new woman and we are getting married soon. My previous marriage was annulled, so this will be my first sacramental marriage in the Catholic Church.

The other morning in our marriage prep class, something hit me. It’s that God can use even my cruelty, irresponsibility, and mistakes. Who was I to think he couldn’t? That my mess-ups were somehow beyond his ability to redeem them? God redeems everything. Everything.

I think sometimes God grinds us into dust so that he can form us from it again.

I’ve been ground down, even though some days I felt fine, over the past decade. This morning, I read this from Lamentations 3:31-33

“For no one is cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to anyone.”

I feel like I’m finally coming out of the wilderness.

What’s ahead? A sparkling beach? A vast open field? A desert? More wilderness? Who knows?

There was a time when I was younger that I felt I had learned some things and life moving forward was going to be a relatively unbroken string of good choices and healthy growth.

But now I like not having it all figured out. I enjoy taking it one day at a time.

As Rich Mullins sang --

“I can’t see how you’re leading me

Unless you’ve led me here

To where I’m lost enough to let myself be led”

If you are in the wilderness now, know that it doesn’t last forever. And even being in it is a grace. It’s what God uses to heal, restore, and grow you

In the wilderness, I have learned to be grateful for so much. Life is good and there’s always hope. And I really do believe what Julian of Norwich said: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

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