Day 33 – April 11, 2025

Wilderness experiences in our lives

As I think of “wilderness” times in my life, they are the times when I have felt bewildered, disconnected and alone – even if surrounded by others.   When I was in high school, my younger brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor just as we were moving to a new city.  I made friends, participated in our church’s youth group and school activities, and otherwise led a “normal” life, as his condition worsened.  But as anyone who has been through a major illness with a family member knows, life was anything but normal.  My brother died eighteen months after being diagnosed, in the middle of my junior year.  I continued to make good grades, graduated, and went off to college – and I felt alone and disconnected.  No one knew about our experiences, my family just kept on doing the “regular” things – and not talking about our loss or my brother.  I believe I experienced survivor guilt – why had this happened to him, and to us?  We should have had counseling, but we did not.

After I graduated from college I went to work on an isolated sea island on the Georgia coast.  I attended church some during those years, but on a “visitor” basis without becoming part of a church community.  I felt that there was a “hole” in my life, and I knew I had no real future in that job, so after a couple of years I left to go to graduate school.  While in grad school, I was blessed through a series of circumstances to meet Steve, my husband.  

As we considered marrying and went through counseling with the pastor who was to perform the ceremony, one of the things we knew was important to us was that we wanted to be part of a church family, and to raise any children we might have in the church.  I believe that having those discussions and making those decisions together as we made our commitment to each other brought my long wilderness time to an end.

The church members here at FUMC, the Sunday School classes I’ve been part of, my Disciple class, and hearing so many inspired sermons have all filled my soul and kept me from returning to the wilderness.  Members and pastors have surrounded us with love and prayers through the deaths of our parents, and in supporting us through deployments of our older son and our daughter’s elopement.

In returning to the thought of wilderness being a time and place of being alone, and looking at the multitude of scriptures that refer to wilderness, I’ve come to realize that a time of being in the wilderness – whether literal or spiritual – can also be a time of testing, reflection and healing; a time when we can meet God and strengthen our relationship with him if we will only let him lead us.

Prayer:  Lord, thank you for meeting us in the wilderness of our lives.  Help us to be aware of others who may be experiencing a time of wilderness, and to love and support them as others have done for us, so that they might find their way out of the wilderness and into fellowship with each other.  Amen.

Pictured below are members of FUMC Sunday Evening Crochet group with scarves crocheted for Veterans at Tutt Fann Home, November 2024.  Photo by Elizabeth Bowman, not pictured.

L to R:  Carrie McCary, Vicki VanValkenburgh, Carolyn Bakke, Mindy LaBranche, Judith Baxter, Luci Mathews