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Living in the Painted Desert April 23, 2007 By Shirley McDonald
Last summer my husband and I vacationed in the canyons of the western United States. Since I have lived in south Louisiana all my life with its flat lands and bayous, the scenery was a never-ending delight to me. At each stop, I felt the scenery just could not get any grander, but each time I was forced to admit that I just could not choose a favorite site.
After visiting the spectacular Black Hills of South Dakota, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, and Lake Powell (and all the tourist attractions associated with these natural wonders—by the way, the flight over Monument Valley was unbelievable, as was the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon), we traveled across the Painted Desert on our way to the Grand Canyon, with my face practically glued to the window.
The Painted Desert is 93,533 acres of badland hills, mesas, and buttes; arid and sparsely populated (I have yet to figure out how anyone can live in a land without cooling, cleansing rain.) Yet this Painted Desert is a fantasyland of colorful exposed sedimentary layers of the most beautiful reds, oranges, pinks, blues, grays, and lavenders in breathtaking beauty.
My Desert As we traveled through this arid and beautiful country, I began to relate the Painted Desert to my life of the last few years.
Over the last 10 years, my family has faced so many tragedies and deaths. Within six weeks two sisters-in-law died. Then, a few months later, three young cousins were killed in a tragic car accident on Easter Sunday. Before we could recover from that, Dad was diagnosed with cancer and given only six months to live. Just three months after Dad’s diagnosis, our preacher-granny died. Very soon after Dad’s death, my mother-in-law died on another Easter Sunday. Then Mom was diagnosed with dementia and thus began our long and agonizing journey of trying to provide the best care for her, finally selling the home place and having her move in with my sister for four and a half years. Two beloved aunts, one whom I had named as my second mom, and another who had grown up as my sister died during this time. Then nine weeks before Mom died, we had to make the agonizing decision to place her in an institution so that she could receive the medical care she required. Two short weeks later, Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc, and then a few weeks after that, Mom died.
Certainly, I traveled through a desert. Accustomed to the lush green landscape that tragedy and death had touched but briefly (and certainly not so prolonged) before, my heart felt as though it had turned to stone. My sister and I, whom our family had sarcastically named the Dignified Sisters because of our most undignified behavior, rarely laughed and seldom provided our family with the antics they had come to expect. The hard lump that was in my heart just would not go away. Oh, yes, I so often put on the mask expected of me—I didn’t want to burden others with my grief. I went about my duties at work, home, and church with a smile, but that smile cost me plenty in the time behind closed doors when I wrestled with my emotions.
My Painted Desert Yet among the arid landscape that had become my life, just as the Painted Desert showed its beautiful colors, there was beauty in my desert, also. My children and nephew had beautiful weddings, chose wonderful spouses, and all have good jobs; my grandchildren provided countless hours of fun, and I completed my doctorate. My sister found a less stressful job, my brother’s health and resulting financial problems improved, my niece began her dream of becoming a nurse; my nephew and his family completed an AIM appointment in Madagascar and are now appointed missionaries to the Central African Republic; another nephew graduated college; a daughter and son-in-law accepted their call to mission work in Ireland. Importantly, too, was the realization that God had provided for us even in the midst of Mom’s dementia, for she became happier and so funny rather than difficult and angry as many dementia patients become.
Yes, there was beauty in the desert, but it was still an arid land, and I wondered if I, like Moses, had to stay for 40 long years. Or as David wrote, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1).
Then one day I saw a small green shrub in my desert when I realized that I was crying in church, not from grief, but for the sweet presence of God that I felt. Then I felt a few tiny drops of rain when my Sunday school teen girls surrounded me during church one night to pray for, and with, me.
Soon I realized that my emotions were not quite as fragile as they had been for such a long time, and my sister and I began laughing again. In fact, one night we laughed hysterically until midnight unpacking 13 shopping bags because I had found an unheard-of bargain—a whole shopping cart full of goodies (well, actually, some of them weren’t quite so good a bargain as others) for the unlikely price of 50 cents! I knew then that finally I was close to seeing the lush green landscape that my soul so craved.
The Promised Land (Again) My journey through the Painted Desert taught me much. I knew all the time that God was with me; however, some of the time the landscape was so arid that I didn’t feel Him. Was I backslidden? No, I was just traveling through a spiritual desert while coping with the things that happen to all of us. Having done all, I was “standing” (Ephesians 6:13). God had not forgotten me. And to prove it, He had those beautiful colors spread throughout the desert to show me His love and to reassure me that He was still with me.
Of course I will go through another desert. I am human, and these things happen to all of us. And I will be glad when I get through it to the lush green landscape on the other side of the desert.
I do know, however, that God loves me enough that He will paint the most beautiful red, orange, pink, blue, gray, and lavender colors right in the midst of my desert: “…I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19).
ninetyandnine.com
© 2007, Shirley McDonald
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Shirley McDonald enjoyed her trip to the desert, but she is glad she lives in Louisiana in spite of the mosquitoes, monsoon rains, hurricanes, and corrupt politicians. Even though she was told that the humidity here in Louisiana makes it feel hotter than at the same temperature in the dryer climates of the West, she doesn’t believe it. She just felt as though she were baking rather than boiling.
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