“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”
Isaiah 55.8-9, The Message
The most consistent spiritual practice in my life over the past decade has been finding God in the wild, natural world. More than any communal gathering, musical expression, or intellectual pursuit, I have had profound and powerful moments of illumination, revelation, consolation, and connection with the Divine when I intentionally move into His creation. Inspired by Ruth Haley Barton in Invitation to Solitude and Silence, I cling to three phrases scrawled on a scrap piece of paper many years ago:
God, I just want to be with you.
God, I need your guidance.
Lord, I want to feel your love.
And so, I walk. Into the woods, up a mountain, beside a river, down the coastline. Wherever there is a ‘wildness’ – that is where I go to meet with God.
This spiritual practice has been a comfort and a surety over these past few years. As I’ve navigated personal health challenges, I’ve gone to the woods. When I have agonized over terminal diagnoses and devastating illnesses wreaking havoc in loved ones’ lives, I’ve gone to the sea. Wrestling with changing circumstances and emergent callings, I’ve sought out rivers and waterfalls. Confounded by a changing cultural landscape and the decay of common decency in political leadership, I’ve climbed rocky slopes in search of understanding. It has all served me well, kept me focused, and given me balance.
But in all of life, there is constant evolution – including this practice. Whereas circumstances have always driven me to seek out the wilderness as a place of discovery and comfort, it now seems that a certain wilderness has come to me. This wilderness is vast, an inhospitable portal to the unknown; where there once were familiar landscapes and mile markers for an entire lifetime – a complete family history – now, there are weeds and vines choking once vibrant and healthy foliage, casting shadows and obscuring vision.
Its name is dementia.
In the tangled, twisted wilderness of this slow loss of cognition, dark tendrils have taken over the person of my mother; her memories and hobbies, her habits and preferences. Her very essence is being choked, robbed of oxygen and light, reducing her to a mere shell of the person I have known for the entirety of my life.
And I am forced to enter into this wilderness, compelled by the responsibility I have for her, the compunction to honor and care for her, a sense that my dad would want me to do this for her. I have to go, bereft of tools or experience to guide me.
Quite frankly, most of the time I don’t want to go. It is unknown, and terrifying, and heart-breaking. It’s seemingly impossible to set aside the fear of my own future, or that of my loved ones. My husband…my kids…will this be me in 20 years? Walking into the wonderful memory care facility where Mom now resides is never without a whole host of emotions and questions percolating beneath the surface of the smiles and congeniality that I offer this woman who holds my history, who held me, who helped nurture my kids, who offered safety and security for my entire life – who now introduces me to others as…her mother.
This is not the feel-good, I-just-had-a-meaningful-encounter-with-God-in-the-woods story of my spiritual journey. These wilderness moments are tinged with sadness and the faint odor of urine and unwashed hair, faraway gazes and occasional anger. They are prickly, and dark, and raw and untamed; when I walk in these spaces, there are few places that feel familiar, or safe, or offer direction. The dementia wilderness is one of loss, and lost-ness.
But I am learning – slowly, painfully, in an unpleasant process that sometimes feels like my skin is slowly being peeled back to reveal something new and necessary, raw and true. I am learning that the practice I began a decade ago will serve me well now, walking into the woods with intentionality and open hands. Those same phrases of expectation still apply, although they are now voiced with desperation:
God, I just want to be with you. Are you here, in this place? Are you with my mom?
God, I need your guidance. How do I do this? How do any of us do this?
Lord, I want to feel your love. Help me. Help her. Help them all.
And slowly, I’ve started to recognize profound and powerful moments of illumination, revelation, consolation, and connection with the Divine, in the wilderness of a memory care unit filled with 47 men and women who are all in the process of loss.
My friend Bitsy said, Stay as long as you can. If it’s only 15 minutes, that’s okay. Give yourself grace. It’s hard.
My brother said, Beth, God sees her, exactly as she is. He knows. We don’t. He does.
My friend Sherry texts to say, Just stopped by to see your mom. She’s sleeping hard. I love her. I love you.
The activities director, Cindy, sends pictures and says, Look at your precious mama. So sweet.
The last time I visited Mom, she bowed her head to my touch and said, Be careful. I love you.
Small moments of grace and revelation.
I walk in to visit Mom, and my heart is truly gladdened to see Patsy, and Karen, and Judy, and Linda; they smile and greet me with a childlike kindness. For each of these women, and most of the rest of this little community, there are photos on their doors of them “before.” Happy, smiling faces with family, engaged in hobbies and activities; thriving, active, engaged. Who they used to be. Whole. I enjoy seeing those pictures and having some context for the past, but I’ve come to realize that all that matters right now is – well, right now. I don’t know these people in any other context than the present, and so I can only greet them and engage with them as they are right now. It’s enough, to be kind, to offer time and a listening ear, to enter into whatever reality they offer.
This is, more fully than I have ever experienced, “practicing the presence of God;” there is nothing else in this untamed wildness.
A decade of walking in the woods has prepared me for this unknown; this lost, uncultivated landscape. I am reminded of Andrew Peterson, towards the end of his song The Silence of God, singing, We all get lost sometimes…
The lyric goes on:
When the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain but the breaking does not
I am learning to live with this reality – that a finite world and all its chaos, disease, disappointment will offer infinite ways of breaking. The wilderness contains exhilarating moments of discovery, and devastating reminders of death and loss; those moments will break me, over and over again. But the breaking is not always final; sometimes it is simply what is necessary in order to rebuild and restore. The abundant life that Jesus promises comes with full awareness and experience, when he said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16.33) The ache of hope and sorrow, of joy and despair; these all fuse together to offer what memory I can still carry – for my mom, for my family, for myself, and for all who wander this wilderness. The beautiful, broken representations of the image of God who are never completely alone. We can take heart.
God is with us.
He will guide us.
He loves us all.
And the places to which he leads us today, the things that he teaches us today, the invitations to deepen spiritual practices today – all these things will serve us well – in his time, in ways far beyond our understanding, when we need them the most. In whatever wilderness we find ourselves, and however lost we may be.
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them. So you’ll go out in joy, you’ll be led into a whole and complete life. The mountains and hills will lead the parade, bursting with song. All the trees of the forest will join the procession, exuberant with applause. No more thistles, but giant sequoias, no more thorn bushes, but stately pines—monuments to me, to God, living and lasting evidence of God.” Isaiah 55.8-12, The Message
