Desert

I stood there on stage, microphone in hand and 300 junior high and high school students staring. Even for someone who is not scared of speaking in front of large groups, this was intimidating. Teenagers are ruthless; they size you up even before you speak.

But there I was. Voice quivering.

It would have been easy to put a smile on my face and pretend to be a super teacher who had it all together, but the honest truth is that I am not a super teacher and I don't have it all together. So I dared myself to talk about life as it is. As soon as I opened my mouth, I started to cry! (Talk about embarrassing!)

I shared about how when I moved to Boise, I knew I was moving to the desert. The foothills are brown, the tumbleweed does summersaults across the road, and the heat is dry and hot. What I didn't know is that I would be moving into a season of my life that also felt like a desert. I shared about how the last 3 years have been long and hard. How many times I have cried out to God and have heard silence. The desert is dry, dusty, and in desperate need of water and that's how my life has felt. Finally, I tried to be encouraging by saying that I think sometimes God wants us in the desert; to just sit and be alright with waiting on him. To wait for the cool breeze of hope and water of contentment... and to trust that it will come.

It was only a couple minutes of sharing and before I knew it, chapel was over and the rest of the day continued as normal.

The confusing thing happened the next day. I received email after email from parents who said that their child came home after school talking about chapel and more specifically, how they were encouraged by what I had shared. I found myself sitting in front of my computer so confused. I mean, really, most of what I had to say was not "encouraging" at all, in fact, it was rather depressing.

But then a teacher stopped me in the hall and it all began to make sense.

"Thank you for admitting that life isn't always easy. Thank you for being transparent and talking about the hard times. We all have hard times, but most of us are just too afraid to admit them... let alone talk about them in front of hundreds of people," the teacher trailed off in mid thought.

It made me wonder...

How many of us are out there feeling like we are in a desert... thirsty and needing water, hot and needing a cool breeze, tired, weary, and feeling like God isn't quite answering... and yet we put a smile on our face and pretend that we are a super mom, friend, teacher or whatever our role is.

And then it made me wonder what life would look like... if we were simply honest about the hard times. And when I mean "hard times", I mean the really hard times. Not the messy dishes or the dirty diapers, not the cookies that didn't turn out "quite right"... but rather, the really hard times, the mess of life that we are scared of talking about. Our deeper, darker secrets... those are the hard times that we all desperately wish we could share, but we don't.

Because we are afraid.

Perhaps being honest about our desert time is like giving water to a friend who is also in the desert.