When crossing a spiritual desert, there is seemingly little of more importance than simple forward momentum.
Hours turn to days, to weeks, to months, and here we are, a year since we began this walk, you and I. What has changed since we last spoke? What vestige of old life have you dropped, and what new affectations have you collected? Has it been for the best?
I suppose that is the only truly healthy way to compare oneself—the comparison against one’s own growth or stagnation. My old pastor used to say that in order to chart one’s growth, one must ask whether or not they are more like Christ now than they were a year ago, bearing in mind that there is no true stagnation in life, spiritual or otherwise.
You are either moving up the mountain, or slowly slipping down the slope. To put it another way, “you’re either green and growing, or ripe and rotting.” Thank you, Mr. Kroc.
As I look back at the last year, I ask myself: “which is it? Have you crossed the desert? Have you summitted another spiritual peak?”
Maybe. Time will tell whether or not my current perception of things holds up.
There have certainly been victories, but any great stride now may seem like child’s play to the man I might be in another year’s time, and even so, any stride is reflective not of my own strength or wit, but instead of God’s grace and targeted influence over the strange movements of my heart.
I will not boast in myself, but that God has been faithful even when I have not, and I will take solace that despite my flesh’s best efforts to stand still and slip away, He bade me forward, one step at a time.
It has been over four years since that fateful summer when I felt so close to His will for my life, and the words echo in my memory from the dreams of that time: “this land was cleared for war.” God help me that it took so long for me to actually listen and heed what He had for me. I know that the past is firmly set, but I still consider the fact that He had set me up to marry Rebekah, something that I would have begun to pursue had my heart not been bent towards its own selfish means. Yet, on the other hand, the Lord used that season of wandering to further burn dross to equip me for the future. So, too, has the last few years been a season of wandering to an extent.
When last I left this narrative, I was resigned to the fact that while things were moving in a positive direction, I was nevertheless in a spiritual desert of sorts. Reflecting on the desert, I see that there was much within my ability to control the entire time. Reflecting on my perceived helplessness, I realize that it was self-imposed because I was not taking charge of what was actually within my control. I felt my time slipping away from me, but had never taken an honest look at what that time actually meant, nor how much of it there actually was. I was all-too focused on the fact that there were problems occurring, deserts to cross, one step to take after another. Too self-consumed to actually step back and realize that none of these things happen in a vacuum.
When crossing a desert, there is little of more importance than simple forward momentum. To be sure, as opportunities arise, you take them as you are able, but there is a general lack of zeal that resonates through everything. “Get it over and done with,” seems to be the prime directive as the hours slip away, and boy do they slip. There never seems to be time enough for what you wish to accomplish, and when the time is found, you have forgotten what it was you wanted to do, or have pushed on so hard that you’re absolutely exhausted. What a way to go through life, right? Bouncing between burnout and boreout with little space in between in a desperate bid to get to the next deadline, only to find that with one project’s completion comes a void of idle living and the incessant nagging at your mind that you ought to be up to something… and the cycle repeats. On to the next.
You know, I lived in that cycle for the last five years of my life at least. The spiritual desert just made it plain that something was wrong, and provided the routine I needed to put some control-variables in place and see where the system was breaking down. Why wasn’t I able to accomplish what I had in mind despite my relative industriousness? Why were my projects stagnating despite what seemed like constant effort exerted? Why was I being swept away by the waves of time instead of riding them as I had when I was younger? Why were my wheels spinning with no forward momentum? Why was I so miserable?
In May of 2019, I reached my limit and finally broke. Over the preceding 8-months I had shouldered an increasing number of responsibilities while simultaneously staving off relaxation of any type in favor of a constant attitude of hustle. The word “no” was not in my vocabulary, except when it came to taking it easy. “There would be time enough to take it easy when I ‘make it,’” I insisted. Time enough to have a Sabbath day of rest. Time enough to go visit the family more than once a quarter. Time enough to eat a meal at the table instead of at the desk. Time enough to be a well-rounded human being.
I very much suspect now that the “time enough” would never have come given my trajectory. There would always be another excuse, another task to perform, another hoop to jump through over and over again until a heart attack or other illness born out of such a lifestyle took me at an early age. Another statistic. Another casualty lying at the feet of Mammon.
Thank God I broke when I did. Frustrated with this general phenomenon of my time slipping away from me, I posed the question to myself: was this a “me problem” or a larger environmental concern?
The answer, I discovered, was complicated.
Do you know how many hours are in a week? 168. I know, I’ve counted. Struck by the notion that I first and foremost had a general sense that things were not OK, but no data to draw from, I set out to track every hour of my week in 30-minute increments. I wanted to know, precisely, where my time was going. I settled on a customized spreadsheet and color-coded labeling system that categorized my life between sleep, salaried work, self-betterment in the form of exercise, family interactions, social interactions, monetarily-driven projects, strictly passion-projects, religious commitments between church and participation in a regular Bible study, general freelance hours, and finally, wasted time. Each 30-minute block of time was labeled and coded based on the predominate activities within that period of time, with a running tally of hours dedicated to each category along with an accompanying pie chart and percentage score attached. Finally, I added a general “Mood” score to indicate how I felt at the end of the week.
From the last week of May into the Fall I gathered my data, recognizing the trend that I had been experiencing playing out before me in spreadsheets and numbers. Burn-out, bore-out. Elation, misery… stagnation.
I was amazed to discover that my general feelings of restfulness were not correlated to actual time spent asleep, nor work performed. One week, labeled “on fire by Sunday night,” had 49 hours of work logged across all areas, but only 46 hours of sleep (roughly 6.57 hours per night) logged, while another week labeled “angry and burned out,” logged 43 hours of total work across all areas and a whopping 57 hours of sleep, or a solid 8.14 hours a night.
Where was the disconnect?
It wasn’t until November that I started to make a bit more sense of things. I reviewed my now several months worth of data, and something struck me. Weeks in which I had a dismal outlook on the world coincided with a few different things: a lack of planning coupled with excess free time, a prolonged period (several weeks or more) of diminished relaxation or time away from work or “obligatory” social engagements, and a failure to recharge at the end of the week in order to prepare for the week ahead.
I was living “koyaanisqatsi,” a Hopi Indian word for “life out of balance.” Put more simply: I sucked at time management. While I was certainly able to function, my new routine had reached the end of my powers of improvisation. While five years ago, I may have been able to “play Jazz” with my schedule, allowing for my mindset to flit freely between a handful of different projects or obligations and efficiently execute them even while circumstances shifted, my life had changed in the intervening years, and I had done a poor job of managing my household.
I no longer had just short-term projects and myself contend with. I was looking at long-term projects, the development of business strategies, release schedules, a growing social network, and, most importantly, my wife to care for. My tendency to “say yes” to everything had resulted in a chaotic schedule in which I was unable to process through my obligations and create definitive plans of action on the fly. Any single “good” or “bad” week was purely accidental. It was the result of time making itself available to me, and not the other way around. I was not happening to life, life was happening to me. I would hustle when it was time to hustle, but the moment that a free moment made itself apparent, a moment in which I could direct my attention to an important, non-urgent task (thank you Stephen Covey), my mind would draw a blank, because I had never considered that I would have had the time to focus in such a way. This lack of planning was killing me.
A clear example of this came in the form of several weeks which I had labeled as “angry and burned out.” These weeks, I found, featured a great deal of wasted time. The amount of time varied, but usually clocked in somewhere around 4-5 hours across the whole week. The reason behind the waste, however, was always a variation of the same lament: “Unsure where to start. Gridlocked. No plan of action.” I simply didn’t know what to do with myself in those moments, and by the time that I had figured it out, another urgent task would present itself, and it was on to the next. Rinse and repeat. Burn out. Bore out.
I needed to learn to plan ahead. To set my mind on the time available and be prepared for when moments presented themselves in which I might make progress on projects that I deeply cared about. I needed to be proactive, not reactive.
This was only one part of my problem, however.
I had a dream a few weeks ago, at the tail end of 2019. It consisted of me languishing in a stormy ocean, desperately trying to fight back against the waves that insisted on driving me to the shore. As I languished, a surfer cruised by, riding along the waves with ease, and a definite swagger. It struck me that this was the perfect illustration of how I had been living my life. I was attempting to fight against forces of nature that I had no control over, instead of managing my means of harnessing those forces to propel me forward. I was exhausting myself in a desperate, futile, bid at control, instead of focusing on my sphere of influence (again, thank you Mr Covey). I hadn’t realized how exhausted I had become until just after the New Year, when I found myself sitting at the window of a local Chick Fil A drive-thru, having sat through the full line during the breakfast rush, and realizing that I had been so “in my head” that I had forgotten to place an order.
No more.
2020 had come, and with it came a break.
The second week in January, I took my first honest vacation in over two years. I say “honest vacation,” because any time I had taken off of work in the past had usually been taken in the spirit of getting more time to do things that needed to be done, all the while checking in sporadically to see what I was missing at the office. During this week in January, however, I didn’t check my email, I didn’t check my phone, and I didn’t make any attempt to devote some time to my passion projects. Beyond basic household chores, I simply allowed for my mind to relax and decompress.
The results were startling. I found myself picking out the knots in certain projects that I had been trying to work out for months in 2019. Now, without any effort, but merely a relaxed mind, they were coming undone, and my mind began to free up in general.
I found myself journaling more. I found myself able to concentrate more. I found myself feeling happier. I found myself able to confront what would have been unbelievably stressful social situations without a moment’s hesitation. I found myself, likewise, able to actually spend time in prayer and focus on the task at hand instead of my mind wandering. And, particularly shocking, I found myself no longer drifting towards negative coping skills like alcohol and overeating. I had taken the time to rest, and consequently, found myself all the more aware, creative, productive, and emotionally stable going back to the office. Go figure, right?
I have learned another “law of the wild,” it is far better to rest occasionally than to burn out constantly.
As a consequence of all of this, I’m pleased and blessed to say that it appears that that the desert I had wandered in has passed. There is an overwhelming sense that God has removed a knot from my heart in order to place me where he wants me so that His true purpose for my life can be enacted, and for that I am grateful. I had forgotten what a season outside of a spiritual desert could be like, how the day to day patterns of life seem to bend towards a greater purpose, how scripture comes alive, how the spirit can be at peace and assured of its trajectory.
I have been realizing more deeply the ramifications of the marriage covenant. Come what may, the Lord has entrusted me with Rebekah’s heart and life, and the hearts and lives of our children. There is no more consideration of myself when contemplating the future, but instead the whole of our family. It is a curious development, as I had never given a great deal of consideration to my mortality prior to being married. I had no qualms about drinking in excess from time to time, smoking, speeding on the highway, getting little sleep, getting less exercise, eating poorly, and the whole myriad of ways that human beings can efficiently subtract days from our number. Now that I am married, however, I have a lingering conviction that anything that I do to negatively impact my health will ripple throughout the lives of my wife and our future children. It is a deeply strange thing to consider that I had not properly considered caring for myself on such a level until I was caring for another human, but such is the case.
It’s damning, but well worth considering, that the “desert” I had been wandering in, had been created and maintained by my own hand. Each misplaced priority another bucketful of sand to a desolate landscape. I believe I had the persistent habit of grieving the Holy Spirit by my actions with sin I knew about and nurtured for years, all the while writing off my vices as a way to cope with reality. “Someday, I’ll take it easy,” that’s what I told myself.
Yet, even in the midst of all of that, God set things firmly upon my heart as actionable: to get in community, to leave my freelance business, to get married, to move to a different church. Then, finally, in a confluence of these various pieces, He finally dealt a killing blow to that area in my heart so that I would make a change willingly and not in bitterness. It was as if I had zero coping skills apart from my sin, and God placed the skills into my life systematically before dealing a killing blow to my negative coping strategies.
“Someday, I’ll take it easy,” well, that “someday” has finally come, but voluntarily, not some blue-sky “better life” or state of plenty that removes all stress. “Someday” has come because it must. It is what God has called me to. Out of darkness and into light. Out of the desert and into… somewhere. The trail stretches out before me, and I frankly am unsure of where it leads. I have some inklings in my heart and soul, some definite plans of action, but how this story plays out is entirely out of my hands. What is within my power, however, is to plan ahead. Life is long, and I know that it is likely that I will stumble across another desert, or several, before the end of it.
What can be done?
