Wilderness. As a person raised in a home of faith, this is a loaded term. Being a child in the 1980’s in the United States adds a little bit more load to the term. My mind fills with cartoon scenes that always end badly for that poor coyote and at the same time a huge crowd of people following an elderly man with a staff as they wander about, waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises. Fortunately, for God’s people, they do wind up in the Promised Land and not under an anvil.

As an adult, the idea of “wilderness” has taken on new layers of meanings as I’ve walked through metaphorical wildernesses at different points in my life. While there are certainly unpleasant aspects of each one—and I’d be a bit suspicious of anyone who says there isn’t—there are also incredible lessons that I would never want to exchange. Not for comfort, not for a mountaintop experience (as much as I love those!).

There’s a reason why God calls the desert (aka wilderness) a garden (see Isaiah 51:3). For most of my life up to this point, I would read this verse and be like, Huh?! It simply did not compute. Then I hit a wilderness season. And not a “short and sweet” one either. Nope, this one was long, weeks turned into months turned into years. There were stretches of heartache, stretches of anger, stretches of mustering up courage and plastering on smiles while finding times to hide away in a quiet, dark place and cry. It was during this prolonged wilderness journey that I finally got it. In God, deserts really are gardens.

It’s in the desert place that we learn how to trust God. Oh, I knew I trusted God. Sure! Of course! I was raised in faith, I was taught my whole life that we can—and should, need to—trust God. It was modeled for me as a child through my parents and church leadership. I had had fantastic experiences with supernatural faith, including incredible spiritual experiences and don’t-close-your-eyes-now-because-God-is-healing-someone-in-a-real-and-visible-way experiences. So I knew I could trust God. But did I?

It was in the prolonged desert place in my life that I learned that I could trust God when I wasn’t in a mountaintop experience. It was in the prolonged wilderness journey that I experienced trusting God when it feels impossible and even when people you trust and respect give you wise advice that is rock solid human wisdom but not God’s word to you right now. It’s easy to trust God when you’re watching someone else trust God. It’s easy to trust God when you read the stories in the Bible. It’s easy to trust God when the worship music is playing and the prayer circles are flowing. It’s easy to trust God when you speak a word and it hits the mark right before your eyes. But then there are times when it’s not easy to trust God.

What about when an accident happens that should have never happened that creates a domino effect of massive, unplanned shifts in your life that lead to financial straits and you wonder how you’re going to pay your bills? What about when God says, Hold your ground, yet month after month after month the bills are higher than the paycheck? What about when God says, I want you to release blessing and grace, yet that person continues to treat you poorly? What about when God has given you promises and a vision for destiny you feel in your bones and says, Be faithful at your post, and yet week after week, month after month, year after year, nothing seems to happen? It can be hard to trust because the feelings just aren’t there. Just being honest. And yet…

As I surrendered in the wilderness, I learned that journey really was the goal. I decided that I was NOT going to grumble (for the record, no one got in the Promised Land because they grumbled) but trust God no matter what, and I discovered why God calls the desert a garden.

The desert is a garden to God because it’s when He teaches us how to dig deeply and root ourselves firmly in Him. It’s a time of learning ultimate trust and learning how to trust even when we don’t feel like it and when it’s hard. It’s a time of experiencing trust in God in a way that literally no other way can. It’s a unique time of forging a unity of experience, theory, philosophy, and emotions so we can go forward into whatever the next season God has planned for us and be unshakeable. It’s a time when God breaks things off of us (which can admittedly be unpleasant, especially if we’re comfortable with them and have become dependent upon them) so the blessing He has for us doesn’t break us. It’s a time of breakthrough in us so He can breakthrough for us and through us.

So, will I voluntarily sign up for prolonged wilderness journey part two? Honestly…that’s a hard question LOL. But would I give up the value of experiential trust in God in the hard places? Never.