The Desert

I struggle with contentment.

Always.

Maybe this is everyone's story, but it is, most particularly and poignantly mine.

I have my dad's wanderlust, and creative spirit, but with a mother-heart need to nurture. It chafes. And I am raw with twisting. I look for some breathing room in this straightjacket life - this crazy blessed straight-jacket life.

The need to create stability and predictability for my crew is at odds with my dreamer me - the other one who get's so little face time. Case in point : the only class I nearly flunked (aside from high school physics - which doesn't count) was home economics. This is not my forte. I strongly and passionately dislike home economics. Strongly. Passionately.

That 1950's image of motherhood sticks like popcorn wedged in my gum. I can't sew. I hate to craft, and flunked out of scrapbooking (sidenote: how is scrapbook a verb - tell me this). I never send thank-you cards or birthday wishes. I only learned to bake because I like cookies. I can cook and like to, but my family would rather eat hot dogs. I refuse to iron. Laundry is a bane. I like a clean houses; I just don't like to clean it. I suck at coordinating play dates. I hate planning birthday parties. And I do not particularly enjoy playing nice with other parents at my childrens' sporting events. Hotwheels drive me crazy. I vacuum up Barbie shoes. I'm not even the finance person in my marriage - balancing the budget is Eddie's job. He does it better.

Luckily, I do like to garden - so there is that.

I need a homemaker wife, wife #2 or something. The details of this proposition are still a bit obscure seeing as I am dead set against polygamy, particularly in my own marriage. It would help if I got to be the head wife, and wife #2 was fatter and uglier than I am. But still, it's problematic don't you think? So the kicker is this: somebody has got to do the homemaking. Homemaking is important and necessary work. I just don't want to do it.

But I love my kids.
I love my husband.
I love them so much it hurts.

I am good at things too; they just aren't homemaker-ish. I'm a good teacher. I can write. I can manage complex projects and solve complex issues. I'm more creative than most. I can paint. I can sing. I can write a curriculum and I am an adept student.

Can't iron!

I have a little girl who thrives on structure, and simplicity. She does well with order and slow, measured steps. When we live like this she blooms, she blossoms into the best version of herself.

But I am dying here.

I cried out to God -
"I see desert. For miles and years stretched out in front of me. If I take the next step my following step will be the same - blistering my feet with the redundancy. 40 years of slow measured steps and crock-pots, is this it? Is this all I get? Because I cannot do it; this long obedience is too long. I see sand, and beating sun to the horizon, and my soul shrivels at the thought. Hope to dust and blown away. I need a new vision. Something less sand and heat,and not this barren land of same slow death."

I cried to God tasting the salt as grief escapes. There is shame in this, so I never let the grief out. What kind of mother wrestles with her role, and shake her fists like I do? Good moms don't. But at last the grief is a torrential downpour. And my tears water the desert.

The desert stays.
I have no other landscape.
God did not remove it.

40 years stretch out and it's all desert. The same desert. Simple, slow life. Unseen service. My feet on the ground moving in the same direction; long obedience is the calling.

When I quit my teaching position, I was so terribly sad to give up a job I loved. I knew it was best for my family; I didn't think it was best for me. Yet God showed me that hard things were for my good too. He could bring me into a spacious place, a place with elbow room and a chance to breath deep. I had hope.

I didn't know the spacious place would be a freaking desert.

I prayed to God for a new landscape. He said no. There will be no wife #2- fat and ugly. I am to be the homemaker. Yet the desert is more than I can perceive, and he has offered to walk with me through it -to open my eyes so I can see true. Desert land is more than redundancy. It is a land of great intensity, and variety. It's hot by day, and cold at night. And the desert blooms with spring rain - flagrant color. It is nocturnal animals, clever amphibians, survivalist tendencies and divine design. The desert may be arid, but it is not barren. It is not barren. There is life here in this place. In this calling there is hope. Strangely, I find that I cannot see these things if I walk away from the God of the Desert - even but a step. I see sand and years away from Him. But when the steady hand of Divinity entwines my vision gets tangled too. And I see with His eyes: the desert is a place of beauty.