Dancing in the Desert: Call Your Troubles "Sam"

If you know me well, you know how much I hate snakes, and it's more than just in the "ew they're creepy and disgusting and God should have left them off His creation list" way.  Suffice it to say, in my world, pink roses are to promises what snakes are to impending doom.  (It's a long story that I plan to share with you someday.)

("The Snake and the Rose" by Ninfa Benoni)

At any rate, you could have certainly colored me intrigued when Brooksie gave me a heads-up that our pastor was going to be preaching on "snakes as a symbol of healing" two Sundays ago.

Snakes?  Healing?  There were too many eye-rolls and oxygen-sucking sighs for such a statement.

But I heard him out (with great anticipation, I should add).

Coincidentally (I see you there, God!), the sermon related a story of Moses in the desert.  It wasn't one I was familiar with--it was a sidebar noting the Israelites' incessant complaining about their circumstances and God's response of sending poisonous snakes to bite them.  God gave Moses a bronzed serpentine scepter upon which anyone bitten could look and not die.

The symbol of what had hurt them, our pastor noted, was what could ultimately heal them, and it even became known as the famous Rod of Asclepius, which you might recognize on signs at pharmacies, hospitals, and any other place of "healing."

I began to ponder the message he drove home--is it possible that our troubles can be a gateway to healing?

From the dawn of time, God has been using that which afflicts us to make us better.  Like chemotherapy, it doesn't make sense--fighting something deadly with something that seems and feels even deadlier.  And when God prescribes a hefty dosage to combat the malignancies of our character, we may watch our former selves waste away.

But sometimes, that's exactly what the desert is for.

To have our troubles, our isolation, our obscurity, our pain kill the ugliness inside--and along with it, whatever is necessary to break us in the process.

It is only then that He can rebuild and heal.

I read an excerpt from Jesus Calling that same day, which coincidentally beckoned us to befriend our troubles because they stimulate goodness.  I laughed out loud and told Brooksie, "Okay then.  I'll just call my troubles 'Sam.'"  But when I said it aloud, I stopped laughing, for I understood.

With as much as our pain or our troubles can dominate our lives at times, they deserve an identity.  But that identity needs to be something we can control.  When we let it run rampant and unhinged, it can feel so gigantic and vicious, and it's a bunch of lies.  So it deserves to be viewed and identified in God's light and truth--as a helper, not as a detriment.  As a medicine, not as a poison.

As a friend, not as a foe.

So name your troubles. Call them "Lionel" or "Rick" or "Sam."  Call them "Ashley" or "Linda."  Do what it takes for you to understand that this desert, this wandering, this season of drought and frustration and mystery doesn't exist to take you down.  It exists to reach down deep and pull the goodness out of you, letting all the rest of it blow away like sand in the wind.

You can be healed, my friend--no matter the means it takes.