My Mother’s Wilderness Experience.

Sacred Scriptures calls a “wilderness experience” a rough patch of life holding discomforts and trials which many believers endure on their journey through life.  It is a stage when life’s pleasantries fade, and beliefs dry up leaving behind a spiritual drought.  It does not necessarily mean believers are sinning, just being rigorously tested.

After leaving Egypt, the Israelites wandered forty years in the desert.  Roaming this wilderness, they spent time encountering famines, illnesses, plagues, and other hardships before entering the promised land.  St. Paul explains why: “…to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2. Cor 7)

While the wilderness is unpleasant, full of trials, stress, anxiety, and worries which tests one’s faith, God’s gift of grace is also there.  The wilderness’ purpose is to refresh and renew always ending with a mountaintop experience of success and achievement.   

My mother encountered a wilderness experience that shook our whole family.  The rock of our family, my mother was our go to person for all things that mattered. She could solve any problem from what we’re having for dinner, wearing to Church, or solving arguments.  She could discipline when needed or show affection when required.  She had rules and we followed them and if we didn’t, my father took her side and so did we.

My mother’s immigrant background taught her to face all obstacles, and only after every avenue was tried would she walk away.  Late in her life, my family realized she was having a wilderness experience.  It was as if the lights in her life went dark.  She walked around the house as if the house was unfamiliar.  She asked my sisters how to clean, how to make spaghetti sauce, or cook easy recipes she used to whip through without thinking.

When asked how she felt, she replied, “Okay” or “I don’t know.”  Finally, we all agreed my mother needed help.  I asked a psychiatrist friend if she would see my mother in her home.  My mother was deathly afraid, she was going to be put away.  We saw this as proof enough that she was not herself.

I went with her to the psychiatrist.  After this first visit, she slowly began to perk up, dress up again, and talk more.  After her next visits, coupled with a medicine change, she was back to her old self. Her mountain top experience began.

What brought my mother into her wilderness was her perception of her present life. For years, she had managed her family, raised her children, watched them move out on their own, make their life choices, raise their own families, and move on from needing her as we once did.  She felt that she had nothing more to do.  She had completed her purpose in life and didn’t know what else to do.  She, then, literally stopped living. 

After receiving help, she saw this was not true.  She was missed and belonged right here with her family.  We told her how much we still depended on her and loved her.  Her dark clouds soon scattered allowing the sun’s bright rays to rush back into her life. 

From her wilderness experience our family learned how necessary it is to show gratitude and express love more frequently.  We learned to take less for granted and show gratefulness more frequently.

 My mom did come back from her wilderness experience and enjoyed the precious moments of her mountaintop experience.  I knew this was true when I saw her in the middle of her day smiling with a rosary in her hands.  I thought, my mom is home again- Thank you God!   

 Many people would be willing to have afflictions
provided that they are not inconvenienced by them. - St. Francis de Sales