God Provides In The Dark And The Desert

In the desert all kinds of things are buried and unearthed; dead bodies, gold nuggets, aquifers full of water and whatever one can fit into the back of a pick-up truck. My marriage too, buried, my life unearthed. I was cast out of my house, like Jonah from the whale, escaping with two suitcases of clothes and a credit score that opened the door to an apartment.

Divorce has a way of divesting one of clutter. One is stripped bare. Unadorned like a desert view, snow peaked mountains unobstructed by trees, Milky Way galaxies unobscured by ambient light, air devoid of choking particulates. Except for the dust and sand stirred by the wind, un-tethering everything that isn’t nailed down.

Out prospecting one day (for gold!) my friend Dana saw this behemoth lying in a ravine. I do not know how he hoisted it onto his truck. Real furniture this, cut from some wood that wouldn’t give up its soul. Pulling into my driveway he asks, “Do you need a dresser?”

My friend found a different kind of gold! A practical altar to friendship, God’s faithfulness and a place for my underwear. Straight-forward oak, shiny dark brown shellack, cool and smooth to the touch. Early American, French provincial, I’ve no clue. Stamped with the name of the furniture maker, Angelus in each drawer. Sun and wind only taking their toll on exposed corners.

Little is permanent in the desert. In that first season, the dresser was a beautiful altar to God’s provision. The next season it stayed a strong and secure piece as I moved into my second marriage. One more time on a truck to an expansive home overlooking Joshua Tree.

Howling wind and sand bury most everything in the desert. The stories stay alive. Winter rains and summer monsoons pour water down dry, cracked channels of dirt and sand filling springs and giving life to tree and grass. Gold washes down these channels as well. A prospector hopes to make a find in these dry washes and old streambeds. He may discover other treasures there as well. Like a cast off dresser.  

Letters In A Box

 

“What are you hoping to get out of them?” my wife asked. To which I’d reply, “If you’re parents abandoned you, abused you, or sent you to boarding school in Siberia there’s always a ‘Why.’”

I’m reading through some letters in a box. They were with my mom’s things, fifteen years ago when we cleaned out her house. A shoe box I put in storage. Forgot I had them until the unit was unloaded. Letters from my dad to my mom. Letters dad wrote to my mom from before my birth until I was seven, my sister five. A one-way conversation.

There are relationships where one partner’s vibrant character, and purposeful lifestyle pulls the other clod out of catastrophe and into a smooth orbit. Not our story. My parents were arcing toward collision. To avoid it my parents lived separate lives, three-thousand miles apart.

The iconic Civil-war letter goes something like, “I would brave hot musket shot and cannon-ball fire to experience your red-hot loving again.” Those were not my dad’s letters. Writing from New Jersey to my mother in the San Fernando Valley the letters contained four basic sentences, incorporated four themes: the weather, repentance, money, and plea.

Two pages, handwritten; “It is March, and I am still sleeping in my long underwear.” “Sorry I missed you when I called last night. The boys and I went out. They bought a round. I bought a round…” “Did you receive the money from Rochester? They owe me about 140 dollars.” Often, there was a question about bringing us to visit or to live in the east. Neither ever happened.

The explosion came in high school. Legal divorce. My sister and I were not surprised. The letters survived, in a box. In a closet. Devoid of answers.

Photo by Ire Photocreative on Unsplash

Jagged Scar On The Perfect Face

That Dodge Dart was everything wrong with my childhood. Powder blue, almost muscle, vintage 70’s. Not blocking garage or front door, parked on the cement driveway under a sturdy, old Pine tree. Ladder for those branches you couldn’t reach when climbing. An easy way up. Sap stuck to your hands wash after wash. Season after season it sat. Dad didn’t drive it. Mom couldn’t abide it.

Pine needles piled up on it in the fall; fine yellow dust falling on her with every Spring breeze. Sitting silent in the periphery. Was it ever discussed? “Hey, what should we do with that car?” I’m guessing dad meant to get to it ‘one day.’ Take her to a mechanic maybe? One day. Money was tight. One day. 

The black mark on the white wall, jagged scar on the perfect face. Deep green dichondra lawn, winding white cement driveway bordered by berry and bush. Mom spent hours in the front yard; mowing, mulching, mending, pruning. Beauty from chaos. Eye is drawn to the scar, the entropized car in the corner.

It wasn’t about memories of family trips in the Dart. No recollection of sis breaking it in with barf on a road trip. I wanted to drive that car. It wasn’t a Camaro or Chevelle sure. More muscle in it then the white AMC Hornet I ended up with. It disappeared with a small chunk of me.

They cut down the pine tree. Too tall, old and close to the roof. A hazard to the house. The Dart vanished. Undiscussed when under the tree, no discussion upon its sale. Obvious in the driveway but not talked about. Hazard to the home. My childhood motif. 

Hard Seasons and A Hidden Hand

                                                    Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust…”

 Driven from my home I drive round it in circles. Threatened with a TRO (temporary restraining order) I am forced to leave. Numb and confused I call a friend for advice. Checking into a cheap hotel that boasts a pool---a plot of dirt, avoiding the hotel boasting rooms by the hour. “How long will you be with us?” Hotel to hotel, one night grows to three weeks. 

Our life calendars are marked by cataclysmic crisis; pre-Covid, after the divorce, before the baby, during the cancer.  Life is lived segment by segment, season into season; childhood, college, that first job, first love, that fast (impractical for a family) car.

Memory is achromatic. Seeing experience as only black. Perceiving periods as pitch-dark. Not seeing ‘the strong hand of love hidden in the shadows.” That period was less a punch to the gut than it was a hollowness of the gut; feeling numb—which is no feeling at all.

 It was the zenith of the locust plague. Devastation cleared the ground for restoration. The locusts destroy what you’ve built with heart and hand. They overwhelm so you see no way out; only dark, only wing and leg. 

From the detritus of crystalline wings springs new life. A new season. Grasshoppers gnawed the first marriage to the root. A season of singleness and necessary soul work. Separation from the daughter burst into rich relationship that continues into her adulthood. New friendships and enriched older ones. Then the greatest surprise; the friend that is my wife ten years into these healing years.

God’s heart for us is that we are not depressed and distressed by the swarm. Life isn’t always driving circles in the dark. The grasshoppers will move on. The air will clear. Soul and seeds survive. In the light we will see what the strong hand of love was working in the shadows.

Wisdom For Taking The Next Step

Many a questioning, many a fear,

Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from Heaven,

Time, opportunity, and guidance are given.

Fear not tomorrows, child of the King,

Trust them with Jesus, do the next thing.

My brother-in-law is in crisis. Flying in to sit with his mom in hospice. Seeking space from his impending divorce and dying dreams. Sharing with him thrusts memory back to my own divorce and the dying of my parents. The question he asks: What to do next? The short answer—do the next thing. The next right thing, though, doesn’t happen in vacuum.

Knowing the next thing to do requires a framework. In pain, with raging emotion ranging down-up-and down again, clear thinking is hard work. In the anger I felt at my wife for forcing me out of the house, for breaking trust, I could have made terrible decisions. Framework saved me. I’d cultivated a handful of deep male relationships. I had vowed to live in biblical context; to seek peace, hope and joy. Framework is crucial.

Process and planning aid in the process. Some days “doing the next thing” meant getting out of bed and going to work. I wanted to roll into a ball or spend the day brain dead with eyes on a screen. Mercifully windows of peace and sobriety would open up for hours or even for days. Those are good times to translate framework into planning. However you best do it; excel spreadsheet, pen and paper, text messages whatever works; do it!  What are the next steps necessary to get a job?  What can I do to communicate commitment to my loved ones. Do I need to (figuratively) take an axe to anything (this question is best asked in a sober, peace filled frame of mind). Taking this step may shorten the periods of despair. 

Let people speak into your life. This requires humility. Telling them to take a hike negates this step. Go back to step 1. Not everyone gets to give counsel.  Only those you trust.  Those friends and professionals you’ve given access to your soul and guts. Listen. Process. 

Gaining traction in crisis requires work, fortitude, perseverance. Doing the next right thing is not easy. We all know that soul that took short-term shots without looking at the big picture; no framework, no process, no community. The ship-wrecks, train-wrecks, the Breaking Bad. Coming through victorious requires more but starts simply: do the next thing. 

Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

This Ache For Home (This Is A Far Country)

You might say it was just a house. I saw it as hope for life-long connection; for community. We bought it with the hope of first marriage; the efflorescence of daughter. I put in sprinklers and planted a little lawn. Walked to school with the five-year old. Got a dog; black and white Australian Shepherd, Collie mutt. The neighbors from around the corner brought over cookies.  The neighbor next door complained about the dog. The grass grew; daughter too.

We had birthday parties in the backyard; Spongebob Squarepants and reptile themed. Invited the cookie-givers children; all three. The daughter played with two boys from down the street that brought their parents. Summer days we’d pull up the cheap plastic chairs and chat in each other’s backyards.  In my heart I thought I’d found it---constancy, Americana, neighborhood, a place of permanence.  I was wrong.

It all frayed at once.  The threadbare marriage showed jagged tears.  The two boys houses down moved North with their parents. A kindred had formed with the cookie clan but job loss here meant a new job elsewhere. With the marriage barely intact Providence thrust us out of the house, out of the area and into a place we did not know.

So it goes. This hunger for permanence and place remains. A perceptible ache that is always there below the surface.  This ache for home; for that far country. For we wander “in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground,” til we finally, God willing, come home.

Cutting One's Losses

The pair were stuck in a very bad situation. Simpson could not climb up the rope, Yates could not pull him back up, and the cliff was too high for Simpson to be lowered down. They remained in this position for some time, until it was obvious that the snow around Yates' belay seat was about to give out. Because the pair were tied together, they would both be pulled to their deaths. Yates made the decision to cut the rope in order to save his own life. Ironically, doing so may very well have saved Simpson's life as well, as he would have died of exposure if he had been left to hang in the strong freezing wind for much longer. -Touching the Void

Cutting a rope to save oneself in the Peruvian Andes is rare. Cutting one’s losses in the course of a normal life is a much more common experience. The process involved in both is the same. You survey the situation. You evaluate the pros and cons. You make the decision in the context of the immediate because you can not know the full extent of the consequences once you’ve severed the line. You take a deep breath, pull back your arm, swing down and slice.


The last slash in my life was my divorce. Fifteen years of marriage incorporated significant time and finances invested in the relationship, various financial investments, sundry furniture and a start-up business. At the end, after the affair and in the legal process of divorce, I looked into the abyss and made the decision. No amount of haggling would make it worth it and hanging in the wind was killing me.

To date the ex-wife and I still own a property which we rent. Its value took a significant hit when the housing market blew up. The mortgage and the investment have been bleeding me dry for the last ten years. I am attempting to get approval for a loan modification; which is similar to being on belay with your enemy. The process is arduous and requires tenacity. The bank’s decision will determine my next step. Letting go of the investment may be the prudent move.

The decision to cut rope and save life flies in the face of all we hold to and all we’ve known. Nerve and sinew, mind and mindset are exposed, fully raw, in the face of the decision. Standing on the precipice the choice must be made. You can only hope that crevasse or Creator catch you when you fall.

Photo courtesy of Mahatma4711

Go Ahead, It'll Take the Edge Off

Hell. I was going to ride anyway.

Got home from work and popped open the browser. Didn't find the email I was hoping to find. Found one from an old friend instead.

"I am in major marital and financial crisis - divorce papers filed. I can tell you more details over the phone. Very concerned about---, as our child still needs his father in his life. ---has little or no family/friends to support him during this difficult and heart-renching time. Has he by any chance contacted you? If not, perhaps after we speak, you could try to reach out to him as he needs a stable and loyal friend right now. I feel his mental, emotional, and psychological state are very low, most likely even suicidal. Don't know where he is."

A dark, dismal, grey and windy day outside which, now, suited my mood just perfectly. I jumped on the bike and furiously road into the wind. Screaming at the wind, and the world, I roared, "Come on! Is this all you've got? A little wind? Come on! Come-On."

Last night at bible study, another friend shared that while he was at the courthouse fighting his divorce, he got a parking ticket. He said that formerly, he would have stewed about it for hours. He said at this point, he feels it's just another skirmish in the battle. He just says, "Bring it on!"

Screaming, and mashing on the pedals doesn't make for good speed or an even cadence, but it takes the edge off of a bad email---or a bad circumstance of any sort for that matter.