The Wilderness Woman

This morning in the mercy of prayer, Father ministered to my heart about being what I call, a wilderness woman. The wilderness is not this dark crazy place like people have made it out to be. The wilderness is surrender, its intimate solitude. Over the centuries , many devout followers of God lived in the wilderness. For it was there where they sought after purity and peace. In the wilderness, there is ample need, ample lives to be touched. This month I watched a beautiful movie on the life of Lilias Trotter, a gifted woman who gave up everything to follow the call of God on her life. A call that led her to the people of Algeria. In Algeria she lived in a city where she ministered until persecution pushed her in to the desert. In the deep of the desert land she found untouched peoples, people who had never heard of the Living Christ. People who had never known the depth of Gods love. In the desert she found home and cultivated such an intimacy with God, that her written words are spirit – breathed.

Some are called to live in the desert. This beautiful place of intimacy and solitude, it is their calling. For others, they are called to live in tribes and cities, there too they experience intimacy and love. For each one, there is an individual calling. For the wilderness woman, she develops keen spiritual insight in her life as a fluid traveller of tents. The desert is a place of the unknown, the mysterious, the miraculous and the thirsty lost wanderer. There she treats those wanderers, helps them, feeds them because she is nourished and she sends them on their way again, with renewed life. Solitude does not mean loneliness, it just means stopping, joining, following where the Pillar of Fire and Cloud moves. There she stops when told to, she connects deeply with others, but she is not called to stay, though love from her heart remains. It's pretty deep. I wrote something, a small snippet of my own journey.... I now understand why I was so keenly aware of the certain ways we as women exclude one another, forming inner circles where others could not get in to. I understand now more, because I have a heart for the ones and the twos. For the woman walking alone or called to - this is truly the Grace and Mercy of God on my life. May the wilderness women out there embrace who they are and know they are called for that solitude! 

The Wilderness Woman

 

 

I found acceptance where I did not think to find it,
in the eyes of unsaved women,
in the caring touches of “ungodly” women.

And I found rejection where I never thought to find it,
in the frowns of saved women,
at the fists of “Jesus” women. 

Out from the borders of tribes, I travelled.
Out in to the open plain. I travelled out in to the blowing sands of the desert,
a Sarah called to leave the tents of Ur with her Lord.

I marched through the sands content with the solitude. 

The unmarked road curved between the body of dues and there I met a woman,
a copper skinned woman, her eyes so much like my own.
We walked together across the cables of wire that joined out two different homes.

Our hearts and hands suddenly ministering to other wilderness women, women with no homes, no cities and no place to fellowship.

For some years, our footprints lay side by side in the sand, until our journey brought us to a crossroad.
Our eyes heavy with unfallen tears, a warm embrace and we both turned, until we were alone. I walked drinking in sisterhood from my Brother Yeshua. I am a wilderness woman, called out in to the plains. Alone, without a tribe, the surface face of my life it’s in this beautiful place called home. 

Then it happens quite by Providence, the emails come with cries between the lines.
Women thirsty for grace, no one to bandage wounds, no groups to try and break in to. I can speak from my heart because I know the habitation of solitude. A Sarah in her tent with her Lord. 

Wilderness women, I meet them across the distant plains, the one woman on the other side. Some strong and powerful, walking in the Roar of the Lion, women I love for who they are. 

I understand the woman without a tribe, she was not called to stay but to move with a fluid like gait across the desert sands, following the pillar of cloud and fire. In the solitude of life, she has learned to see, in the desert of her abode, she has learned to listen, she sings the song of the Wind. Not all women were called for the cities, not all women were called for the tribe, some women were called to dwell in the desert, in the arms of sand and Love. Wilderness women, beneath her palm tree, home. 

Sharing with an amazing woman Lisa!

at #GivemeGrace