90 Degrees at Midnight

We're currently experiencing one of the longest hot streaks in fifty years. It's been over one hundred degrees for three days now and it's only supposed to get hotter for the next three. It's unbearable. Too hot to move, and too hot to breathe. Yet it's fitting for me. Outside it feels like I've moved to the desert, and so my body is now joining the place where my soul has been lying in wait for a while now. Desperately thirsting for water, crying loudly for rescue from the scorching heat.

It's been almost two months since I woke up on a Tuesday morning slightly convinced that my soul was suffocating. Somewhere in the craziness of sprinting through my spring I had dropped my compass and ended up wandering through the desert. The problem was that I had been ignoring my soul's thirsty cries for a while and so once I realized where I was, it was too late to turn around. I was going to have to walk through the desert. I was going to have to figure out how to get to the other side.

Now, I've never been a big fan of heat. I'm the first one to flip on the air-conditioning in the spring, and the last one to run the heater in the winter. Heat makes me unable to breathe. If there existed an underground city where it is always damp and cool, I'm pretty sure I'd take up residence there. But never have I realized how much more unbearable scorching heat is to my soul. How it feels to be desperate for a breath of cool air to flow into the holes that the heat has burned through my very being. I keep expecting to wake up one morning and be back where the nice, cool breezes blow, but I'm seeing that it rarely works like that. God allows us to wander blindly into the desert so that we can learn to rely on Him for a drink when we get thirsty, for shade when we get too weary to keep walking and need to rest, and ultimately for finding our way to the other side.

I am blessed to be aware of the fact that Jesus, too, has wandered through the desert, and so I have felt Him walking beside me through the entire journey. I am also blessed to recognize that there are people that Jesus randomly interjects into my journey, sometimes to offer me a cool drink of water in many different forms, and sometimes to carry me for a little while. And once I realized what a true gift these other people were, the load I was carrying in the heat suddenly became lighter. I wasn't meant to carry it alone, and often I wasn't meant to walk alone either. There is nothing in the world like a traveling companion. So even when Jesus allows me to be stranded in the desert, I'm learning that He never leaves me without the tools I will need to get out.

In this journey there is no easy way out. Sometimes the heat is so much I just have to lay down and let it blow over me for a while. Sometimes I get so thirsty that I find myself pleading with Jesus for just a little drink to get me through the next moment. I don't know how much longer I will be left to wander, and I don't know how much hotter it will get. But I do know that like the temperatures outside, eventually the heat will back away and there will be relief. Eventually my cries will be answered and I will again be able to breathe in the cool air. As for now, Jesus promises never to leave my side, and He is providing great resources to keep convincing me to keep walking.

Late last night as I was driving home, I passed a thermometer that told me it was still ninety degrees outside even though the sun had gone down hours ago. The heat is currently so strong there seems to be no relief in sight. So it goes with my soul. The heat continues to swell around me, and yet I know I will not be scorched. Just like the summer will end, I know I will find my way back to the cool breezes that keep my soul breathing. Meanwhile, I choose to take extreme measures to make sure I won't be reduced to ashes. I force myself to not be afraid to ask for a drink when I'm desperately thirsty, and I accept the fact that sometimes it gets too hot to move any further. So I wait. I wait, and I pray for rescue. Help is on the way.