Braving the wilderness together

Survival strategies (and retrospectives) for lent and resistance

Is it just me or do other people feel like lent is feeling a bit too on the nose?

It’s been just about a year since I started this Substack, so I just went and reread my first post, yet another musing on lent, that made me feel like I still have so much to learn, despite a full year of living. You see, the season of lent is often compared to the biblical theme of the wilderness, a desolate place where so many people literally struggle to find their way and survive. And with everything going on in our country, I certainly feel threatened by the unpredictability of the wilderness, by its vast power and seeming desire to squelch the very resources my family relies on to survive.

And in those moments, I feel so very alone. What I mean by lent feeling too on the nose is that the wilderness seems wont to reinforce my smallness, my fragility, my humanity in away that is truly petrifying.

Stacks of brush in front of a field, foregrounded by mud and green that can only mean spring. My photo.

But what I have been starting to realize this week, as well, is that especially in the Bible, the wilderness never gets the last word.

Indeed, what happens time and time again in the wilderness, is that God reinforces that despite our circumstances, God is with us. So this sensation that I am so very much alone is coming not from God, but from the wilderness. It’s coming from the world itself, and why would I give them heed when I already know what they have to say?

A few months ago, when my colleagues and I began our semester together, reflecting on what kind of educators we wanted to be, it was me who said that when I thought about the challenges on my own, it all felt daunting. But when I realized I had an army of educators beside me who were in the wings wanting to lift me up, it also felt important and possible. And a few months later, I realized that this is because God’s story is fundamentally different from the story the world is telling.

God has not forsaken me. In fact, God is for me. When I look back on the last year and the way God has shown up with allyship that I didn’t provide, that I didn’t even imagine, it is clearer to me than ever that God is for me and my family, and that God is in the business of making and keeping promises.

What this also reminds me of is that my advocacy is just part of the story. I cannot and will not save my daughter or save my family through my own toil. And while that sounds rather bleak and horrible to admit, I wonder if it’s just more human than anything. After all, isn’t part of the problem with this current administration that they want to promote lies that suggest that we are alone, that we don’t need each other, and that our existences are even in competition with one another?

But perhaps and especially because my family lives only by and through the care and commitment of others, I know that there is another way. This is disabled wisdom. And it’s also so faithful to God’s provision. There can be more, even when there seems to be only scarcity. There can be manna, even in a wilderness.

In the past few weeks, my husband and I have started gathering with our co-workers over dinner. These are not really people we know all that well, but people who we want to know. And at first, it has felt a bit incongruous, futile, even to do so. The country is burning, and yet we’re going out for Chinese, hosting people in our home, getting to know each other. What’s the point?

This week, I also had conversations with both of my daughter’s nurses, who are currently here on green cards, about their immigration status. I let them know how glad I am that they are here and that we will do whatever we can to protect them, despite the precariousness in which we all find ourselves—them, wondering if they could be deported at any moment—we, wondering that even if they can stay, we may lose Medicaid services that would make their visas obsolete. But what was the point in saying all that? Especially if we might not be able to save them or save Medicaid?

The point, I think, is to remember that feeling alone is a limiting belief that doesn’t come from God. And to remember our collective humanity, to remind one another not just of our fragility, but also of our incredible ability to care for one another, that is precisely the stuff resistance is made of.

In all those moments in scripture, when the wilderness closes in, God doesn’t ever compel us to stare into the abyss and accept our certain death or take cues from the desolation. Rather, God responds by imploring us not to lean on our own understanding but to trust in God’s presence. And if as Christians, we believe that God’s presence truly knows no bounds, the most radical thing we can be doing in this moment is gathering with our neighbors, even expanding the boundaries of strangers to neighbors, living into lent with not just our wounds but with the promise of the resurrection.

Now don’t get me wrong, the reason I struggle with lent is because of my own humanity. I get sidetracked by leaning into my own advocacy, assuming that I must and can make my own way through this wilderness. But when I remember that I’m not writing to myself, rather I’m writing to you all, and that I have coworkers, friends, and family who truly love me and want to help carry my load, I not only feel a little sheepish, but I also feel courageous.

We can do something together by confronting these limiting beliefs, especially for people we know whose circumstances make it downright impossible for them to hear anything else right now. We can drown out the wilderness with our collective humanity, broken yet redeemed, fragile yet resilient. And precisely in the moment where scarcity causes us to fear, we can do the other most human thing in the world and reach out, within and beyond our spheres of influence, to softly yet artfully, create a network of resistance they never saw coming. We can be radicalized by empathy not just for those in our circumstances but those who they say threaten our existence.

And perhaps most critically, precisely in this season of lent, we can lean into God’s promises and say, God has not forsaken me and therefore, I will not forsake you. Take heart, friend, we will brave this wilderness together.