We returned from our time serving in Uganda to an America that has changed significantly since we left it in February 2020. And it continues to morph since our family has been back. While we have been grappling with this long season and the exhaustion of not knowing what’s next, it seems the U.S. is entering into a similar phase of uncertainty about the future.
It’s a wilderness time.
In my spiritual walk during home assignment, I have been asking: how do I get through this extended time of unknowing, through this wilderness?
God has answered in different ways and I’d like to share one of them with you.
One of my fun flight attendant friends gifted my daughter, Piper, and me free plane tickets to Maui for her ninth birthday. We were able to stay with another dear friend (and her daughter) who lives on the island, and even use their extra car! This trip was such a gift, and close to free. It also happened to take place during the season when humpback whales travel from Alaskan to Hawaiian waters and give birth.
The first few days, I kept telling Piper to keep her eyes on the horizon and surely we’d see one of the infamous humpbacks. A Maui native had recounted how just yesterday she’d seen a mother whale teaching her baby how to breach at sunset. But every day we looked, we never saw a thing. I started to feel my hope landslide into disappointment and skepticism as we looked out at the horizon. Why won’t these whales just show themselves? Can’t they see how much I care?
One day, when Piper and I were swimming through the warm waves, we saw a woman doing underwater handstands. I thought it was peculiar amidst all the upright swimmers—but it also seemed playful, and I liked that.
It wasn’t until we dove under the water ourselves for an extended time that we heard the faint reverberations of creaks and clicks and hums, that of a humpback whale’s song. Piper popped up, “What was that?!” she asked, excitedly.
“A whale song!” I said.
We dove back under together, and what was the best way to stay under the water the longest? By doing a handstand! That lady wasn’t weird or practicing underwater gymnastics! She was skillfully positioning herself to hear the song that no one else was attuned to, or even aware of!
Every day we’d been to the beach searching and waiting, yet we’d actually been swimming in, quite literally immersed in, what we’d been looking for! All it took was a reorientation.
Multiple times in this wilderness season, God has shown me that even though I have been expectantly placing my gaze for something to happen (“out there”), He has been all around this entire time, in the deeper and stiller place, just underneath the waves of doubt and fear. He isn’t being elusive, or making us search for His plan in vain.
Many days my head has been above water with my actions and my thoughts. I have peered out at the horizon, seeing nothing, and wondered when the grand display will appear. I’m sure many of us are waiting for our own version of that breaching humpback whale, asking when will I have that ‘a ha’, when will I get definitive answers, when will I move from this searching angst into peace?
I was reminded by the woman in the water what to do: ignore the crowd, enter that strange albeit optimal position, get quiet, and listen. An otherworldly beauty is here. We are living out our days in the waters of His singing.
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