The Desert

2 and a half months. That´s the time that´s passed since I worked at my previous job in Bastion Popular. In those two and a half months I´ve had an incredible opportunity to begin to retool myself and make myself a better me, but it hasn´t come without its challenges. What it´s really taught me is that God really places people where God wants them to be at the exact moment in time that they need to be there, and I did need this desert, so that I could come out more focused on God´s will.

First things first, I had two wonderful oases inside of this desert. First was my visit from Christine, my girlfriend, that took place this past December. She only came for four days, but during those four days I realized how much closer we had become in our time apart. As soon as we hugged I knew something had changed between us, but it wasn´t a bad change, or a change to be afraid of. It was growth, a development of our love for each other for the five months we were apart. In those four days I realized the blessing she´s been in my life these past months, and this really pushed me to work on myself spiritually and emotionally so that I can be the best "me" I can be (more on that later).

The second oasis was the volunteer trip to Vilcabamba that we took the week following Christmas. It felt great to get out of Mount Sinai and just get lost in the scenery and the wilderness with a bunch of my good friends. We laughed, told stories and just enjoyed each others company. This really brought up my spirit and boosted my moral from sort of desolate. Being without a job does that to a person, and when we returned from our trip I was in the midst of entering a desert that would last for a while.

Towards the end of December, early January, we were greeted with a struggle over land. The land owner, Marcos Solis, and people like him were called "land traffickers" by the President of Ecuador, and when Solis fled the country, everyone came to take some of his land. People were moving in left and right. All of the comfort and knowing the neighbors in our neighborhood began to fade with all of these new faces and new people whom we didn´t know. On top of this, the government was beginning to knock down houses around our area because of "invaders" who took the land. So we were asked to house sit in our house to ensure that, if the government and military did in fact come, we could explain what a house like ours was doing here and present our land papers to them.

Because of my job loss, I was the one who did most of the house sitting by choice. My compañeros were out making plans and doing wonderful things around the community, and while house sitting preventing me from doing that, it also gave me time to reflect. I asked myself hard questions: Why was I here? What did I want my volunteer year to look like? Was it even worth it staying here? In my daze on the couch I found myself asking these questions and bringing myself closer and closer to starting again the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, until one day I just picked up the book and started.

In this action I began to understand what this time was going to mean for me. It meant a reconnection with Jesus, a time for me to realize my call from God more absolutely. And it truly has been. I´ve realized that in my past I thought a call from God meant that I needed to answer it alone by joining an order and becoming a priest or a monk. Now I realize how my call from God specifically asks me to be in relationship with others, my friends, family, and Christine. Because of Christine´s position in my life I´ve been reflecting mostly on our relationship together, and realizing that God´s call in my life requires that I make a decision either to follow it or to not, to choose my vocation and hold on to it or ignore it and believe that I have any control over my life. And yet, because I am willing to listen to God´s call in my humanity, despite its imperfections and misunderstandings, I know that what I want for myself is God´s will done in my life, and I know that my vocation involves another person there with me. In not as many words, the one I love who came to visit may be my vocation, and I am actively choosing that end for myself.

Because after the desert, Jesus began his public ministry and began to do God´s will in his life. He was thrown out of his own home town and questioned by the powerful and the rich, but the most important thing to Him was fulfilling the will of God in His life as well. In traveling with Christ I am able to see His life as full of the will to do what God wants of him, and in doing that, realizing that what He truly wants is the same that God wants. We do have free will, and we do have the power to take our lives into our own hands. We can do that with Christ or without Christ, and no matter what, we live with that decision. I don´t know how long I´ve been without Christ, and maybe the desert of the past 2 and a half months has lasted longer, but now I´m out on the other side and ready to begin living my life again inside of the Cross of Christ.