Years ago, I got tired of viewing life through the lens of mountains and valleys. It was too yo-yo like for my taste. I was up, then I was down. For some reason, it simply did not seem to capture life in a healthy way for me. It made way more sense, for me to see life as a journey that is way more consistent in its altitude. Sure there are little rises and low spots but for the most part, life is a journey on a road. It has twists and turns but instead of mountains and valley’s it has more like desert stretches and lush oasis gardens. I get that this might not be for everyone but it has helped me tremendously feel like I am not failing or even moving forward if I wasn’t on a mountain or in a valley. And while I had experienced dry times before, I could not recall having gone through such a desert stretch like the one I was in (and to some extent still there) before.
I always considered the desert to be dry and brown and desolate. Especially when comparing it to life. There was little, if any, real beauty to look at while one journeyed through the desert. It was hot, dry and life and time didn’t move it simply crawled slowly. Nothing happens. There isn’t any energy other than the heat that continues to drain you of what little energy you might have left. That is what I thought until a flight to San Diego.
As I was flying into San Diego for a couple days of meetings, we flew over the desert and as I was looking out the window over the countryside, much of what I thought to be true was represented. I saw very little beauty. It was brown and looked incredibly dry. That was until we got closer to the airport and as I continued to look out the window, I saw lots of brown but there were these little pops of intense color. There was life but it didn’t look like I thought it would. In fact things were not just surviving, but were thriving in this desert place. There was not an abundance of flowers and greenery, but what was there was intense and it was beautiful.
Photo by Andrew Coelho on Unsplash
And here is discovery number 2. Even in the desert there is beauty to be seen, we just need to learn how to see it. Granted, it will not be as prevalent as the garden oasis, but it is still there. And often, the beauty we find in the desert is deeply intense in color and intense in its ability to capture our eye because of the rarity in which it occurs and it always appears in the places we least expect it.
[bctt tweet=”Even in the desert there is beauty to be seen, we just need to learn how to see it.” username=”robbgossen”]
If we are being honest, more often than not, life rarely looks like we think it should or hoped it would be. We have these preconceived ideas and notions about how life should go and then when it doesn’t (and rarely does it ever go the way we think it ought to), we are thrown for a serious loop. Rather than looking for the beauty that is around us, we get caught up in what life isn’t and we end up missing what is around us.
When we enter this desert season of life, we have to stop, gather ourselves, and see the beauty in where we are. Sure, what we were hoping for and how we wanted life to go isn’t there, but there is still something incredible for us to experience. I love this quote by Mary Sisson Eibs “Many people think the desert is ugly because they come here in winter, but even in the winter the landscape is beautiful. It just takes a while to see and appreciate the beauty.”
How often do we believe that our best option is to merely survive the dry and hard patches of life? That simply hang on long enough, close our eyes and muster all the strength we have and keep moving forward, we will eventually get to a place where things will once again be desirable. That we can move from survival mode to a place where we can really begin to thrive. I can’t help but wonder if by viewing the desert as something we must survive, we rob ourselves from the opportunity to experience something deep and beautiful? What if the desert is not just a place to survive but a place that is refining and preparing us for something beautiful that is to come.
Maybe you are in that rough patch of life. Regardless of whether you call it a valley, a desert, or a low place you have these preconceived notions of what it will look like. It may very well live up to some of those expectations. But what else is there right now that you aren’t seeing? What is there around you that is good and beautiful and promises that you don’t merely need to try and survive this part of your journey but even in the difficulty you can thrive?
