The Wilderness Seasons

And just like that I’m back. Back in the wilderness. There’s a familiar lonely and cold feeling here. But each wilderness season is designed to reveal and heal different parts of you. I wonder as I’ve become more self aware- if this wilderness season is self inflicted or God inflicted? And I have to believe it’s both. One of the most magnificent parts the of the spiritual journey is becoming self aware. Self awareness was the first means of operation in my awakening. Once the self awareness grew, I grew. I started seeing everything for what it truly was. Like a veil dropped. I was seeing life through a new set of lenses. It all began to make sense. Why I act the way I act. Why I have the triggers I do. Beginning to come in tune with my emotions. I felt brand new. It’s like I was saying hello to a new Bailey when I looked in the mirror. Beginning this journey is by far the best life choice I’ve made. In fact it was what I needed and God knew it. Devine timing is everything. 

What they don’t tell you though is that it’s not all enlightenment and sunshine. I said its beautiful but it’s also the hardest thing someone can do. It takes great strength and courage to sit with the deepest and darkest parts of you. The parts of you that you kept in a box away from the world because even you were too scared to open it. They don’t tell you about the wilderness seasons. The wilderness seasons are periods where you face great trial and tribulations. A time where you sit with yourself. Where you are revealed your wounds and tempted in the darkness. Just as Jesus did when he spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. No food. No water. Only the temptations of the enemy. 

In this particular wilderness season I’m being shown my inability to be alone and my need for love and affection regardless of the catastrophic affects it takes on me. Professionals would probably call this anxious attachment and codependency issues. I crave a deep love and connection. Bringing pure love and intentions to each person I meet expecting it to be reciprocated. And instead of letting go and walking away when it is not; I press harder to do what I can to receive the love. Now these things aren’t a bad thing I’ve begun to learn. It’s all in the power of balance and learning to love myself as well.

As I look back on my younger self it’s really hard for me to remember parts of my childhood and the past versions of me. Oddly enough though, the parts that I do remember each version of me has something very similar in common. There was a slight uneasy cloud sitting on my shoulder, I desired to be seen and loved and boundaries were not heard of. I think that what we all really long for as humans is to be heard, seen and loved right? However as a kid you don’t have an awareness of self or emotions, or at least I didn’t. All I knew is my heart was big and I seemed to always love and care harder than my peers. Always focusing on the approval and thoughts of other I just never seemed to really know me. I always became my environment and what everyone else wanted me to be. A people pleaser you could say. Bailey back then had no back bone and she definitely didn’t have her own voice. As I think about younger me all I wish I could do is sit with her and give her the biggest hug. But what I didn’t realize is all of those traits where unhealed wounds. Some wounds that were predisposed to me before I was born. So I really can’t blame her but show her the love and grace she deserved. 

What feels like the first time in my life I’m being confronted with this fear of being alone and always being on the chase for real love. Whether that’s in a friend or relationship. I’ve always seen my self as such an independent person. I feel like I grew up faster than those my age and have a sort of an “old soul” if you will. So I feel like this one is a little hard for me to swallow. But man is it true… I have this very strong, independent, “I don’t need anyone” version of me. But another version of me that seems to win every time is my, “everyone deserves to be loved and anyone can change if they just put their mind to it and I can be the one to show them” narrative I get swept into. And that’s the ‘healer’ version of me. One of the many purposes that God has placed me on this Earth. And that’s the part of me that I love so much because this world is full of darkness and I love being a light. But I also struggle with boundaries in knowing when enough is enough. In every relationship or friendship I’ve stayed way to long and endured so much affliction because I felt like I had to love them. That this time it will be different. Just getting kicked and stepped on. Taking so much from everyone and getting little in return. But no matter the pain it caused me I never wanted to let anyone down. And with out knowing it I blink and I’m watching myself put up with 4 years of emotional abuse, being swallowed by toxicity. Shortly after that falling hard for a guy to only in the end find out he was full of deceit, lies and lust- seemingly manipulating me spiritually. More or less I found my self in cycles. Damaging cycles. I just look at my self now and see exactly how I got here. It all makes sense. I craved a love and connection so hard I didn’t receive and found my self looking for love in the wrong people because I didn’t know what healthy love looked like. All snowballing until I was 22 when I begin my self healing. However its not until now am I discovering the depths of mutilation this wound has caused. Mending wounds is not an over night process. You discover new layers the deeper you dig. Shinning new light on new discoveries and even new light on old discoveries. 

I’m 23 and I find it almost painful being alone. And I think that’s why this wilderness season seems to be the hardest one yet is because I’m actually alone in it. The most difficult part about sitting in your own space- alone- is you have no other choice than to hear your own thoughts. You have no distractions. No-one to hide behind or anyone else’s baggage to distract you from your own. You are naked. Exposed. Seen. Not by any other person other than yourself. And I find that scarier than having 1000 strangers judging you. Because you can’t lie to yourself. You can’t swift the truth under the rug. It is starring directly at you. Often times the truth is so hard to swallow we spend our whole lives running from it. Rather than facing it. Accepting it. Healing it, and allowing it to help us grow and become stronger in our selves.

I became tired. Tired of running from the pain. Tired of putting myself in relationships that destroyed me in the hopes of a drop of love in return. Tired of feeding the soul of a man to have him only sucking my life dry. Tired of overplaying my part in someone’s story. Tired of staying in relationships that’s expiration date expired long ago. So I finally mustered up the guts to sit alone in this wilderness season. And I have to say I’m pretty fucking proud of myself. 

Thats not to say I haven’t been tempted to run to a quick temporary fill of company. The Enemy thrives in the wilderness. He stays lurking, waiting to plot on our biggest weakness. Tempt us during our trying times so we give into to what isn’t serving us to try and stop our healing progress. Mindfulness is a tool worthy of sharpening. I tend to lead with my heart causing me to ignore my intuition leading me straight into the exact thing I should have ran from.

Something they don’t tell you about the healing journey is the grieving process of shedding old layers of yourself. And the pull between a want to step into this new higher divinity but also finding so much comfort in your past self, you have trouble letting go. It’s like I crave suffering and I long for hardship. It is hard for me to let a good thing be and automatically assume bad news is always creeping around the corner. It has been a mindful process to shift the narratives I tell my self. The story I’m beginning to tell my self is that no matter the situation good or bad, there is purpose and and meaning that will come out of it.

One thing I do have to say, although it’s been desolate, I’ve really enjoyed starting to get to know me. All the parts of me. Getting down to the very roots of who I am only to discover so many other parts of me I did not know existed. So I have to be thankful for this painful wilderness season. The pain creates growth and that’s all I want to do is grow. The beauty of the wildness seasons is the focus and attention you get to bring to yourself. Stopping and pausing to get back to who are. I want to be the best me. I want to pour love and wisdom into those I meet while holding the boundaries necessary to do so. I want to be strong and resilient in any circumstance. And I have to say I don’t think I’m doing that bad of a job heading in the right direction. 

So cheers to growing. Cheers to learning. Cheers to shedding old layers. And most of all cheers to the wilderness seasons that make us stronger. They never last too long, the light is always at the end of the tunnel…

~ B