The Desert Ramada

For those of you who don't know, Cassie and I are in the process of getting our house built. During this time, we made a critical error and moved into a smallish apartment only slightly bigger than a jail cell - with a smaller head clearance.

And I have hated it. We don't even clean it well because it doesn't feel like home. It feels like some horrible place we have to sleep with the local gangsta thugs throwing parties below us.

It's not just that the place isn't clean. Cassie and I have found neither of us have the motivation to clean it. We simply don't care.

Example: If you had an old ugly beat up car - a Buick Riviera per say - an 80's model - you wouldn't spend days detailing the car so your friends could see you driving the polished clunker around. In fact, you try to avoid the clunker and slump down in your seat every time you drive it so that people wont know that you are the owner of the car that is fuming up the parking lot.

Anyways,
The confinement of the apartment has done some weird things to me. To us.

Did I mention we have a three month old in there with us?

And a Labrador?

And Kitty Master?

Chaos I tell you.
But I seem to be learning some things. Which is almost always the point of hard situations. You must learn something from them or the hard situation is just painful and worthless.

Marriage is hard (I don't mean it's not good. Its great. But you are living with another person all day every day. Its not easy. Great. But not easy). Harder when you live in a confined space. You have to really work on the whole 'patience and love' thing. You realize you have more sharp edges than you previously thought. And those sharp edges are bringing your spouse to tears. So you work on chiseling those edges down and making them smoother - more patient. More kind.

And the architectural plans keep getting delayed or put off. And the City of Arlington is super snobbish and nobody seems to know anything helpful - and they become a delay to themselves.

And Cassie holding my screaming child who is upset because he's crampy, comes to me in frustrated tears wondering when we are going to have a home. Because this tiny prison-like place isn't home. This isn't the place where we relax. This dump of an apartment is like an annoying extended-family member you put up with because you have to.

We drove by our old nice apartment last week and as we passed it on the freeway I casually noted to Cassie, 'Is it bad that our old apartment still feels like home? And I miss it?'

She agreed.

Wandering around in a desert isn't fun. Even when you didn't doubt God and your being there isn't some punishment. You know the Israelites doubted God and ended up in the desert for 40 years. Which is remarkable when you think about it.

I figure - if I was in the desert and I started walking to the west - eventually, before 40 years, I would end up somewhere with a beach. Say I walked 7 miles a day, every day for a year : that's 2,555 miles. That distance should get you somewhere right? Somewhere with a beach? And fun drinks with little straw hats?

But the Israelites were in the desert 40 years. Walking around in the sand. And sand works the edges off everything. You take a car (the dumpy 80's Riviera for example) and put it in the desert for a week. You'll come back and find the paint chiseled off, the rubber worn down, the windows scratched and the engine wont start.

Now imagine the look of people in the desert for 40 years. Hard core bunch of people I think. Skin like leather. Tough as nails. Wrinkly. Tan like cinnamon bread.

But these people know hardship. They have had the time to think about their decisions. To wonder what got them there. To wonder about what other things they should have done. They have learned to live with the annoying extended-family member and to do it with patience and kindness. They have learned mercy and forgiveness during their lengthy stay at the desert Ramada.

Sometimes going through a desert period of your life can be a good thing. A chance to become a better person. A chance to chisel your hard edges away. A chance to get to know your wife in a new way. A chance to love her better. A chance to discover the crazy little things you learn about a person living in a confined space for a time.

Maybe the desert isn't so bad. Maybe the limbo of being there is an opportunity to see who you really are. To see how you respond and react in certain situations.

To see how patient you are with God. Your vocabulary changes in a confined space. You become turk. Not like the Turkish people.
Maybe I mean curt. Yeah, Curt.
Very tart. Straightforward. No messing around. No adjectives. Unless they are colorful and attached to four and five letter words.
The real you comes out. No doubt about it. And Gods place in your life, the real place he sits - not just the place you tell others God sits, becomes rapidly apparent and obvious.

It might not be easy or fun. But then, even Jesus went into the desert for a while. And nobody will say his trip wasn't eventful. It wasn't easy. But it was eventful.

Maybe rather than complaining about the desert, the heat and the sand gathering in strange orifices... maybe you should just embrace it.

I said before - if you go through a hard time and learn nothing, than the experience was worthless. I think that's true.


So, may you find the sand not quite as bitter as you thought.