I grew up learning how to be silent. How to move without making a sound, how to read the air in a room before stepping into it. I learned to listen for the way tension settled into a space, how it could sit heavy on the walls like smoke before the fire broke loose. It wasn’t the kind of childhood where you felt safe taking up space. It was the kind where you learned to survive by shrinking.
I used to pray the way some people hold their breath desperately, silently, hoping for something to break before I did. But God was quiet in those years. Or maybe I was too afraid to listen.
In every great story of faith, there is a moment when the believer is sent into the wilderness. Jesus went into the desert for forty days. The Israelites wandered for forty years. The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree, facing every demon his mind could summon. The desert isn’t just a place it’s the season of life where everything falls away, where you are left with nothing but yourself and the question of whether you are brave enough to keep going.
I didn’t know I had entered my own desert until it was too late to turn back.
I married young. He was strong, steady, sure of himself in a way I had never been. I thought maybe if I tied my life to his, I would be safe, that I would finally know what it felt like to belong somewhere. I had children fast, threw myself into mothering the way a drowning person throws themselves at a life raft. I cooked, cleaned, cared, built my whole world around making a home that was warm, safe, different. But even a house built with good intentions can crack at the foundation.
And mine did.
It didn’t happen all at once. First, there was the exhaustion, the quiet ache of knowing I wasn’t happy but convincing myself that happiness wasn’t the point. Then came the doubt. The slow realization that I had built a life that did not fit, that I had stayed because I was afraid of leaving. But faith, real faith, is not built on the absence of fear. It is built on walking forward despite it.
And so, one day, I did.
I packed my children into the car and drove toward a future I could not see. I had no degree, no career, no real way to support us other than the work I had always done with my hands, healing, tending, knowing in ways I could never explain. It wasn't enough, but it had to be. Because I was never going back.
The Israelites stood at the edge of the Red Sea with no way forward, Pharaoh’s army behind them. Fear clawed at their throats. But the sea split, and the path appeared. Not before they needed it. Not with any assurance that it would. But just in time.
I was waiting for my sea to part.
Temptation, Testing, and the Long Silence
The house was old. The floors creaked, the windows whistled in the wind. The kids and I huddled in one bedroom at first, using what little we had, making it work. Every night, when they were asleep, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, heart racing with fear. What had I done? What if I couldn’t make this life work? What if I had led us into ruin instead of salvation?
Jesus faced three temptations in the desert. If you are the Son of God, the tempter said, turn these stones into bread. Throw yourself down from this temple. Worship me, and I will give you the world. The greatest test wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t even the lure of power. It was doubt.
I knew that voice well. You cannot do this. You are not enough. Turn back.
I heard it in the grocery store, counting every dollar in my head before getting to the register. I heard it when the pipes burst one winter and I had to figure out how to fix them myself. I heard it every time I put my hands on someone who needed healing and wondered if I should be doing something else, something more practical. But the work had always been real. My hands had always known things my mind didn’t. And when people left my table, their pain eased, their breathing steadier, I reminded myself that faith is believing in what you cannot see.
The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree while Mara, the great deceiver, whispered in his ear. You are alone. You are powerless. You will fail.
But Mara is a liar.
And I was still standing.
On Our Knees, Afraid, but Moving Forward
People like to talk about faith as if it is something easy, something warm and sure. I have only ever known faith from my knees.
Jesus, the night before his death, sweat blood as he prayed, Let this cup pass from me. The Buddha, before enlightenment, faced every fear he had ever known. I stood in my broken-down kitchen, hands shaking as I tried to stretch one meal into two, whispering into the silence, "Tell me what to do".
Faith is not a certainty. Faith is walking forward even when you are sure you will fall.
And so, I walked. I learned how to fix things myself, how to make money with my hands, how to heal in more ways than one. I built a home from nothing. I worked. I prayed. I doubted. And then, one day, I woke up and realized that I was still moving forward.
The Israelites made it out of the wilderness. Jesus walked back from the desert and into his calling. The Buddha opened his eyes and saw the morning star.
And me? I stood at the kitchen sink, looking out at the yard, the wind shifting the trees just enough to make them sway, and I knew I was no longer lost.
Years later, when life had settled, I took the kids to the desert. We stood in the open land, nothing but sand and sky, the wind kicking dust into our shoes. The air was dry, the sun sharp. My youngest asked, What’s out here?
And I said, Everything.
Because the desert is where we are stripped of everything we thought we needed. It is where we are tested, where we doubt, where we kneel.
But it is also where we are made whole.
Hari Om Tat Sat
Comments