Process to Freedom

... and was led by the Spirit into the desert.
Luke 4:1b

The Desert is where I learned the importance of knowing how to be alone with God.

I had put a lot of expectations on my surrounding community to be everything I needed for life as a single. God, in His grace and wisdom, led me into a desert (season) to be alone with Him, so I could get the order right. He is first. People are second.

Journal Entry, Age 32
I’ve always turned to people for emotional needs, and when no one was around, I turned to escape, turned within myself and hid away in sadness.
But Jesus, You’re the only One who can fill my heart. Are You keeping me alone now so I can make You Lord in my heart? So I can know You first? The hardest thing for me now is time alone with You.

Journal Entry, Age 33
I know Your goodness. I know Your care. But Your love... this one I’m still learning... Your love is the attribute of You that goes to the inner-most parts. The deep, hidden part of me. The most vulnerable. The place where I am me. No pretense. No shell. No clothing. No defense. No barrier. No under-exaggeration. No holding back to protect other’s feelings. You know me in that place and You love me. I am loveable. Even in that core.

Come away, my beloved.

Song of Songs 8:14

He brought a time where all I had was Him. I went into the season resisting aloneness with Him. I kept filling my time with friends and busyness, afraid of being alone for too long, afraid to feel loneliness.

I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be alone. Jesus is great, but I NEED someone that I can actually see.

I remember the day I surrendered. I was supposed to meet my friends at the beach a few hours away. I put the address into GoogleMaps and set out. When I arrived, my friends were nowhere to be found. After calling them, it turned out that I had typed the correct name, but the wrong area and I was a few hours away from where they were. After processing what happened, I realized that in a sense, Jesus had been asking me to come away with Him, and I had been resisting, and He was using this opportunity where I was all alone hours away from home, hours away from friends, to show His love to me. This began the season during which He became first place in my heart.

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

Psalm 25:16

Journal Entries, Age 33

June 12
How long will You take me into the wilderness, literally alone?
(As I talked to God, I felt His response): “Not forever, but for a season.”
Those married people never had to do this.
“They’ve each been on their own journey with Me.”
I’ve been brought so low. Never imagined this was coming.
“I’m with you through it all. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned. You are being refined.”

June 25
Jesus, fill my sadness and my longing. I’m so sad in my aloneness.
When I feel that heart-crushing sense of loneliness, I know I need to push into You. You really want me to go to You with my loneliness. As a life practice, not occasionally. You long to fill me.
Maybe one of the hardest things about the wilderness is you don’t know how long you’ll be in it. But I know You led me here and You won’t leave me alone in it – You’re always with me – and You will bring me through it.
And there is water to be found in this wilderness. There is a well.
Oh God, why a desert now? I’m so alone. What is so wrong with me that You’re singling me out to break me so much.
“Jesus was brought to the desert. Led by the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:1).”
God wants to prepare me more. It’s an honor to be drawn into the desert. It’s an invitation of relationship – being taken by the hand and led by His Spirit.

Desert – Day One
“Just trust Me with your fears. Lay down your offenses.”
I am laying down everything I hold dear, placing each thing into Your hands. (A list of 27 things!)

Desert – Day Two
I feel that there is necessity in this time of having no community for a season – feeling that loneliness. Just like Jesus felt hunger in Luke 4:2.
“She does not live on community alone, but her first ‘food’ is her relationship with her God – intimacy in the secret place with her God.”

August 24
You alone are God – there is no other.
How long will this aloneness continue? I’m 100% alone. Did You bring me out here to abandon me? Or did You bring me out here to lead me tenderly into a place of deeper love and to strengthen me...
Help me to not say what the Israelites said, “Did You bring me out here only to let me die?” I followed you here. I know this is a refining season. Please complete all that You will to do in this season. Even Jesus didn’t want to suffer, but ultimately He said, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

August 30
Oh God, that I would prioritize relationship with You over all relationships.

August 31
This desert season is getting to that raw, stripped back place where all I can feel is You and me. My heart is exposed and everything is coming to the surface.
Don’t look around because it’s just desert! I need to keep my eyes fixed on God! To find His words to respond to the discouraging and fear-based thoughts!
You never deny hunger. You will always meet us. And feed us. Let these fasting days teach me something about hunger. Let my hunger break down any and every obstacle and denial and offense.

Everything was removed from me, but it drove me to You.