Waiting in the Wilderness

As I write this article, I am sitting next to my two year old daughter who is battling a case of pneumonia. Over the past two years, Katie and I have been like nomads roaming a dry and arid land in search of water. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we have been circling in the desert and struggling to depend upon manna for the day. Every time we store manna for tomorrow, it becomes infested with maggots; the Lord has taught us that lesson much lately. Living upon our "daily bread" (Matt. 6:11) has been testing as both Katie and I love certainties. Through Karis' illness, however, God has shown us that the only thing certain is his presence and promise. Specifically, he has said he will always be present with us (Matt. 28:20) and he has promised to work all things for our good (Rom. 8:28). Although God will ultimately bring his presence and our good to fruition in its fullest sense, he in the meantime calls us to wait in the desert. We must wander in the wilderness before he brings us to the promised land.

Waiting in the wilderness is not easy. Our American culture of convenience and consumerism suggests that if we are uncomfortable or even miserable that there is something wrong. And yet, the hallmark of the Christ story and our story is that of suffering. When Karis was first diagnosed, Katie and I cried and stopped eating for two days. I distinctly remember looking her in the eye and I said, "We can't keep this up." She nodded in agreement and replied, "We can't live like this." In fifteen minutes, she was giving Karis a bath in the back of our one bedroom apartment with her mother and singing to her as if nothing had changed. At that juncture, we both began coping with Karis' disease in different ways. Katie, to her own confession, dealt mainly through denial. However, I will focus on myself here as I must admit that Katie has not retreated from the wilderness like I have. She is an example of child-like expectation and faith that has humbled me to the point of tears. The way I have dealt with Krabbe has been through despair. I am an overly analytic thinker as it is so I tend to project the worst case scenario in any event. A wheeze is pneumonia. A seizure is a sign of brain loss and further disease progression. An increase in medication is a surrender to the possibility of her not being healed. Since all of these disaster scenarios are too difficult for me to confront emotionally, rather than taking my hurting heart to the Lord, I numb myself through escapism, abstraction, obsession. Each of these defense mechanisms I will describe briefly as each proceeding one is less and less effective at distancing from my emotions.

Escapism keeps me the furthest from my emotions because in escapism I retreat mentally. I do this through food. I do this through books. I do this through movies. I do this through video games. The difficulty lies in the fact that these things in themselves are not bad but when they are surrogates for going to the Lord with your feelings they become addictions and idols. Eventually, I have to leave my alternate reality of pleasure (created through food, books, movies or videogames) and confront the reality of suffering. Not thinking about pain only works for so long. Soon, I have to start thinking and so I retreat by thinking in a distancting kind of way.

Therefore, through abstraction, I withdraw from the pain of the situation by speaking of Karis in detatched language. I can talk in a cerebral way about medications, research, and the nature of the disease. More than that I abstract about how I am doing with the Lord. I have a mind that has a proclivity towards conceptual thinking so I will say all the appropriate theological things: "The Lord is sovereign" or "The Lord can heal." What's worse is I will even abstract about things that pertain to the heart but that I have not practiced with my heart and actions. I can say, "God has taught me that I can be honest with my emotions before him and come messy before him" and yet I haven't done that in two years or longer. I am a hypocrite and I repent.

The final way I retreat from my feelings of despair is through obsession. This mechanism is the least effective and has me the closest to having to confront my emotions over Karis. Since I feel scared, sad, and uncertain about Karis and I have no control over her life, I project those emotions into obsessional fears onto myself. What if I have cancer? What if I die in my sleep? What if I go crazy? Every heart palpitation becomes a heart attack. Every headache a brain tumor. Every racing thought a sign of insanity. All of these irrational fears are my mind's way of taking the fears I have of Karis' life being uncertain and place them on myself. In other words, since I can't control Karis' life nor my feelings over Karis' life being in danger, I, like the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness, begin circling and circling again and again in my mind with obsessive fears. I obsess over dangers concerning myself because those are things I can control with compulsive thoughts or behaviors whereas Karis is a person who is not under my control.

Eventually, once God removes my escapes, he demonstrates that these obsessive fears are but shrubs and I am in a desert, exposed and naked before him, I begin to feel again. I feel disappointed and angry at God. I feel hurt by God's providence of Karis' sickness. Yet, by being plucked out of my hiding place, I am in the wilderness again. Ironically, when we are in the wilderness is when we are nearest to God for the Holy Spirit led Christ and leads us up into the wilderness (cf. Matt. 4). When we discard our hideouts, we must face our despair. The paradox of the Christian life lies in that we must despair in order to hope. We must be real with our emotions before the God of our emotions can give us his peace. In other words, we must go through the desert if we are to reach the oasis; the Israelites did not reach the promised land without the wilderness.

Stay in the wilderness, my friends. I dedicate this article to my wife who, through humble faith has remained in the desert and taught me what it means to look to the promise.