The Desert Revisited
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can do to do
The next right thing
Kristen Bell, “The Next Right Thing,” written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
I did not expect to be writing again so soon, but inspiration is as much as curse as a blessing; I am once again beckoned back to the page in the midst of my work. As I was helping clean around the house and packing up my things, I was going through my old binders and workbooks from my time studying at a seminary (a school for men who are discerning the priesthood), and I came across an article that I had written for our weekly newsletter.
This old article was written during a very low point that year, and in it, I attempted to wrestle with my feelings of emotional and spiritual desolation. I began the article, “There’s a famous quotation from St. Padre Pio: ‘Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless.’” These words are inspirational and wonderful.
They are also nigh impossible to live up to.
At the end, the worry always presents itself; the pain is always there. We only choose how we respond to it. As I wrote, I described desolation as a desert. It is dry and harsh and devoid of life or liveliness. There is no flourishing there. Without water, there can be no life.
My response to this in the article is that we must continue forward. “We cannot sit in the same lonely place in the desert and simply expect water to come to us. We must keep moving, traveling over the next dune, even though the sea of sand seems endless.”
This next step is not easy.
There are a million reasons why this shouldn’t work. There is an entire continent between myself and my goals. And when I notice all of these anxieties, I let them consume me, stun me into paralysis, drag me down into darkness again. I have been procrastinating, irritable, and lost. I leave in two days and the basement is still in disarray.
I don’t know where to begin.
And so, after I have written this, I will pick up one small thing, and put it where it belongs. I will take one shirt and pack it in a suitcase. I will take one blanket and put it back on the pile with the others. I will take another step, because that is how I can move past this. I have learned this before and I will learn it again, over and over, until I have walked out of the darkness and deserts, the pains and fears, the anxieties and doubts, into something new and alive.
