“Any struggle with addiction is a desert because it involves deprivation. If our motivations are primarily utilitarian, this deprivation may consist only of the denial of one specific object of attachment: trying to do without so much food, trying to give up tobacco, and so on. With major addiction or more conscious spiritual motivation, the desert can grow to encompass all of life: every habit may be exposed to the searing, purifying sun; every false prop is vulnerable to relinquishment; and one can be left truly dependent upon the Grace of God for sustenance.Most of our deserts lie between these extremes and most of the time we do little more that dance around their edges. All the same, deserts enrich our lives immeasurably. Each desert holds seeds of repentance, possibilities of recognizing how mixed our motives really are. And with the rain of grace, each desert holds the possibility of our reclaiming our true heart’s desire. Even if we only touch their edges our deserts teach us about the limits of personal power and point us toward that constant center of ourselves where our dignity is found in our dependence upon God.”
My reflection:
One day in 1983, opening the mail one item was a Notre Dame Alumni magazine. I would have generally put it in my junk mail file but something caught my eye. There was a test to determine if you were suffering from alcoholism. I took the test. The results were very clear. I was an alcoholic.For years, I had been in denial. The elephant in the room, so obvious to everyone close to me, was pressing me so hard against the wall I could hardly breathe. This was a fateful day in my life. I began the journey to freedom. I began to accept my helplessness against this major addiction. In a few years, I had stopped drinking but I needed much more healing. On a retreat in 1988, I laid out a program for my new life free of alcohol. It was clear and positive. It took me twenty years to finally put it completely into practice.
Along the way, I had a special experience. Once again on a retreat in 2005, I had a powerful insight into my life since I had stopped drinking. In Exodus 19:4 it says, “You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagles’ wings and brought you here to myself.” I saw my call out of slavery to drink and to the freedom of being sober as God treated the Jews in the Exodus. It was not just a matter of stopping drinking but the total experience of God in the process.
The insight on the retreat was several years after the lived reality. Like the Jews in the Exodus, only deep reflection on the reality allowed them to understand their experience of the saving God long after the events took place. It is same with us. Only time allows us some element of clarity in seeing God’s actions in our lives.
May’s description of the desert fit perfectly into my experience of freedom and healing.
