Thank God it’s over. That defining season when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place – when it hurts to go forward but even more so to go back. I knew God had put me there: between Himself (the Rock) and the hard place (the life I knew wasn’t my true destiny), but for a while the Rock did not feel like the place of refuge He truly is, but just like a cold, hard, rock. And throwing myself onto this Rock was the only viable choice. Ouch.

He laid it on the line: Who’s going to be in charge, Him or me? Would I go forward in the amazing destiny He has for me, or live a humdrum humanistic existence? I knew which one I wanted – but it was the falling onto the rock, the proverbial ‘wilderness’ or ‘desert’ I had to ‘cross’ in order to get there that I was recoiling from.

I somberly weighed my options: avoid the ‘Cross’, that arduous journey of death to self, and settle for a status quo life, or surrender to the death (and resurrection!) process, and explore the path of endless possibilities.  I decided, as Peter’s words became my own: “Where else will I go? You have the words of eternal life“. (John 6:68).

So I sputtered my way through, as the slightest move, word, or thought revealed more handicapping debris that needed to be scoured away. Though I yelped and snapped as I felt I was being rubbed the ‘wrong’ way, He patiently, yet resolutely, polished.

I still shudder at the intensity of the process, but schlepping the dead weight of malignant beliefs and destructive behaviors is far worse. Now that I’ve tasted the benefits, though it sometimes still makes me wince, I welcome the ongoing ‘polishing’. I am alive like I’ve never been. I’m discovering what this means: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly”. (John 10:10)

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her”. (Hosea 2:14)

Do you feel like you’re ‘stuck’ between a rock and a hard place? Ask God if He’s orchestrated this ‘desert date’ so He can speak tenderly to you and whisk you into the destiny you were born for.