Wilderness

I think the word wilderness conjures up different images for different people. Crunchy pacific northwesterners probably think of pristine pines, isolated lakes, and Chacos. Desert dwellers may think of canyons, red arches, and Slickrock. Folks out east may be lost in Appalachia with dimly lit lanterns and faded maps. Southerners imagine swamps, gators, and Medusa from The Rescuers. When I hear wilderness I think of two things:

1. Standing barefoot and clueless in a seed tick nest at Cuivre River State Park without a sneaker large enough to hold my foot the next day. (true story)
2. The Judean Wilderness. (see photo)

Wilderness is far from cozy, comfy home. Wilderness is somewhere you ended up lost and lonely by accident. Wilderness is no Eden.

In the 12 years I waited for Archer life slowly cut and pasted a découpage of beautiful lessons in my mind and heart. It has been a painstaking and exhausting catharsis to pick them apart layer by layer with tweezers and an x-acto knife; needing to sort, translate, and write down the meaning of each delicately fused piece. I have two glittered and gluey remnants left. One of them, a picture of a dry wasteland, stands for:

GRACE IN THE WILDERNESS.

Remixed: NOW CAN ALWAYS BE BEAUTIFUL.

When the new booklet of Bible photos came out years ago I perused it in my studies and always came back to Photo No. 3: The Judean Wilderness. I’ve seen footage of Israel on my Truman Madsen Holy Land documentary as well as the Thanksgiving Point 3-D movie Jerusalem. (The day I saw Jerusalem was also my first time to eat Waffle Love. Good day date, Greg, even if you slept through the movie.) Israel is lovely; fields of poppies, groves, places by the sea. The Judean Wilderness is not lovely. It is a huge expanse of badlands and there isn’t one fleck of green in the miles and miles the photo shows. I would never choose the Judean Wilderness as a destination. Not even if it had a penny smasher.

Probably somewhere around seven years into the baby waiting I realized I was in the Judean Wilderness. I figured it out because every time I looked at facebook people were posting pictures of Hawaii or announcing they were going to Hawaii in a few months. Every time I went to the store I saw Hawaii in a car seat. Every time I ate out with Greg Hawaii was crying at the table next to us. Lush, tropical, Skittle-colored Hawaii with its pineapples and soft sand. I hated my bleak, barren vacation and didn’t know what I did to deserve a timeshare there. Even my sea was Dead. I pulled out my booklet and glowered at the photo.

After I glowered (let’s face it, you can’t glower that long…nobody’s eyebrow muscles are that strong) I re-read the caption:

JUDEAN WILDERNESS AND THE DEAD SEA The Savior went to the wilderness to commune with his Father.

The Savior fasted 40 days and nights in the harsh wilderness of his choosing. Satan tagged along. It appears he had nothing of comfort except for his father, The Great God of Heaven.

People emphatically declare I’D NEVER TRADE MY TRIAL AWAY. They say this because although trials stink the periphery is perfumed. I know at year seven there was technically nothing growing in my Judean Wilderness but once I found new closeness with Father it began to smell of orange blossoms and cinnamon rolls and mirepoix sizzling in a hot pan. It was bearable, or as Sheena Parker put it, “There were still tears, but they were different tears.”

A few years later, while reading the Book of Mormon in the temple (bless the long lines, bless them) I read a verse* with my two buzzwords:

And we did follow the directions of the ball, which led us in the more fertile parts of the wilderness.

Because my GPS hadn’t moved with the passing of time (my static balloon marker showed latitude INFERTILE longitude WILDERNESS) it was news to me fertile parts existed in the wilderness. After all, my own eyes had beheld basic beige for a decade.

The ball spoken of in scripture was the liahona, a compass-like device which only gave directions if the participants were giving heed and diligence to the commandments in faith. With increased devotion I chose the right believing it would lead me to some green somewhere. My best efforts, combined with talking to and relying on Father more, is what opened the door to let grace flood in. I stopped seeing mirages and began oasis-hopping. Suddenly there was shade, temporary quench to my thirst, even a bit of fruit. A new dusty stretch always lined my path but it never took long to reach sanctuary.

After years of orienteering my exile I discovered wilderness was lonely, dead, and ugly only if I wanted it to be. God is in the wilderness and through the merits of His Son grace abounds there as well. There is no problem where Christ isn’t the answer.

Of note is the Good Samaritan. He helped the man beaten and robbed on the highway connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. Guess where that road cuts through? The Judean Wilderness. I think this geographic tidbit is the Lord’s reminder someone always has it worse than we do. Helping a soul in need despite our icky life location is truly heroic. Being a victim of wilderness does not excuse one from looking outward.

Gerard M. Hopkins' poem sums it up best:

What would the world be,

once bereft of wet and wildness?

Let them be left.

O let them be left,

wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Photo lyric: Bono, from "Grace", Photo courtesy of lds.org

*1 Nephi 16:16

The parable of the Good Samaritan is found in Luke 10:25-37. I have to wonder if Jesus came up with it during his 40 days in the wilderness.

The part of the definition of GRACE in the Bible Dictionary I really love:

The main idea of the word is divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ. It is through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts.

This is the page from my booklet. It makes it look a lot uglier. Sky and clouds really dress a wilderness up. 

I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. -Isaiah 41:18