Why Your Life Needs to Suck (Before it’s Sweet)
Posted on June 14th, 2011
“Why does everything suck so bad for me right now?” I think we’ve all asked the question. Either quietly in our beds or quite loudly after a few drinks. Whether faced with another lame job interview for a lame job you lamely don’t want. A relationship gone sour like a pack of stale Gummi Worms. Or just a move back in with your parents, sleeping in the basement because your old room was turned office years ago. Saying that our 20′s haven’t exactly gone as planned is probably the understatement of the decade.
Most of my 20′s that I write about in my upcoming book All Groan Up: Searching for Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job! felt like a steady progression of figuring out exactly what I don’t want to do with my life, instead of what I do. More questions than answers. More failure than success. More what the hell than what the heaven!
Much likes to be written about the Millennial Generation being eternally optimistic no matter the situation. But what happens when that optimism turns quite pessimistic? What happens when the lush gardens you’ve been “promised” turns barren desert wasteland?
LET ME GET ALL BIBLICAL ON YA!
Throughout the arc of the Bible countless people are forced to the desert. Not just metaphorically as people like me like to complain, but literally, burning-sand-vultures-waiting-for-them-to-turned-well-done, desert!
There was Abraham, King David, the Apostle Paul, yes even Jesus, the main-squeeze himself, was “led by the Spirit” to spend forty days and forty nights alone in the desert.
But probably the most memorable and publicized desert experience is Moses (aka Charlton Heston) and the entire Jewish populations little 40 year jaunt through the desert. 40 years! That’s slightly more substantial than our quarter-life crisis. I’m sure Moses cried more than once, “God this sucks! Find someone else because this ain’t what I signed up for!”
MOSES KICKIN DESERT BOOTY
But the thing about Moses is that he just didn’t spend forty years in the desert, no he spent eighty! Yep, 80 freaking years! Because before leading the Israelites through the desert, he spent forty years prior with the Midians in “a dry and arid place,” similar to the desert he’d lead his people through. As Os Hillman writes,
“The desert was a place of preparation for one of the greatest assignments given to one man. Did you hear what I just said? Yes, the desert was the place of preparation. Moses was battle-trained in the same environment he would spend another forty years…What kind of assignment is God preparing you for? Does He have you in the desert of preparation? Learn well the lessons you are there to learn. You may find you are called to be a deliverer, just like Moses.”
This gives me solace and hope as I feel forgotten, sweaty and unable to swallow. Maybe God’s not punishing us desert-dwellers, he’s preparing? Maybe your purpose — like Moses, can only be forged in the difficult, in the dire. Because there’s something significant that happens to us when we are void of what we depended on.
WHY WE NEED THE DESERT
As Dallas Willard writes,
“All great works are prepared in the desert, including redemption of the world. The precursors, the followers, the Master himself, all obeyed or have to obey one and the same law. Prophets, apostles, preachers, martyrs, pioneers of knowledge, inspired artist in every art, ordinary men and the Man-God, all pay tribute to loneliness, to the life of silence, to the night.”
No water, no food, and no shade — it’s easy to die in the desert, no doubt about it. But if we can stay alive here, with all our old comforts burnt and blown away, well gosh then we can stay alive, and thrive, anywhere else.
So sure things might suck right now, but how we travel through the Suckiness will be the biggest factor in determining how Sweet it will be.
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Anyone resonate with this? Anyone feel like the you’re in the desert right now? Anyone come out of it and can attest to the Sweetness on the other side?
I highly recommend you listen to this message by Mike Pilavachi. Go to this address http://southlands.net/465719.ihtml In the search box type in “Lessons from the Wilderness.” It’s kinda long (about an hour) but well worth the time. Mike makes excellent points about the lessons the desert time teaches us. It’s been hugely meaningful for me, especially his third point. That point was something I had never considered before and has been transformative in my life.
In brief, the the lessons from the desert are
1. God takes us into the desert to humble us.
2. To teach us the secret of praise and thanksgiving when it hurts
3. He takes us to the desert to allure us; to speak tenderly to us
Now go listen to it yourself. You won’t be sorry!
Thanks Lindsay for sharing these great points! There’s definitely heaps of humility in this place, but humility that will serve us very well in the future if we will allow it.
I’m pretty sure I’m stuck in the hot, dusty, sweaty, crappy part of the desert right now … Keep hoping for someone (preferably a cute guy who’s got his act together) on a camel to rescue me and get me outta there ::fingers crossed::
Jocelyn – Well just when you think it can’t get any crappier…well…it…does…then a little better…than 10 times crappier…but you keep moving forward despite it all and then all of the sudden you see a shade of green on the horizon, and next thing you know jumping in that refreshing blue pool of awesome.
And you didn’t even need the cute guy on the camel to get there. Because lets be honest, that camel probably is headed right back into the hot and crappy. Now you just have company. Which is cool and all until you’re sharing the same tent and it’s 110 degrees and all his cuteness annoys the crap out of you.
This makes sense to me, but for me the anxiety comes from not knowing if I’ve crossed over to the other side.
Yep. Completely agree Sarah. So I guess the only way to find out is to keep walking and take notes.
Between this post & the ‘expectations’ guest post, your blog was the perfect pick-me-up I needed this week. Thanks for being awesome as always!
Thanks April! I can’t wait for the April guest post on All Groan Up. That’s going to be the pick me up I need.
cool idea! I’ll brainstrorm something & get back to you : )
If there is an other side, I imagine it’s like this: http://mugforthought.blogspot.com/2012/02/other-side-imagined.html
It feels like it’s taken all 25 years of my life, and all I have, to reach this idea of what the future could be like.
Awesome. So true. Thanks Sarah
Thank you!
As someone who is married, a parent and having found a passion to pursue in your writing/speaking, yet someone who clearly understands what twenty-somethings like myself who haven’t yet achieved these things are going through – what are your thoughts? Have you felt yourself arrive at a point where the feelings I describe, while still part of your life, are less worrisome?
I realize these are personal questions so feel free to answer as you feel comfortable – I would love to hear whatever you have to say.