I have been coming up against a certain concept within Judaism on and off for over a year now and I feel like it’s time for me to look it in the eye.

That concept is wilderness.  The Wilderness is a pretty epic character in the Torah.

Earlier this week, I was walking through a department store and came across Oprah’s new book The Path Made Clear.   When the first page of the book made me cry, I felt like it was worth purchasing.

The ability to wrangle with The Wilderness is, in my opinion, the entire narrative of the Torah.

A few key concepts that are speaking to me right now:

Wandering is innately Jewish

I heard something pretty profound recently, which was that in Christianity, the emphasis is on what you believe.  Your beliefs are the primacy by which your religion is defined.  In Judaism, we may not know what we believe but we know what to do.

It makes me think of the different types of therapies that a exist.  I have a friend right now dealing with anxiety who is experiencing unbelievable amounts of success with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  CBT is a great therapy because it looks at both dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors to move someone in the directions they want to go.

I, on the other hand, spend so much time thinking about and dissecting my thoughts that my therapist and I have found that somatic experiencing, a body-based therapy is often more effective for me.  I have to start in my body. If I get too cerebral, I can actually decrease my wellness.

The ability to feel lost (physically, emotionally, and spiritually), is an incredibly brave thing.  The Torah spends a great deal of time discussing the story of the Jews wandering. Not as much about their redemption.   The journey was where we were built.

Being out of slavery does not mean you are free

When the people of Israel escaped Egypt, they escaped as slaves.  Many say that a we had to wander in the desert for 40 years because the generation of people who only knew slavery would never know how to behave as free people.  You can remove the shackles and still remain enslaved.

I apply this to my life and feel like I suddenly understand why, even when I know I can/should/will, I feel incredibly inadequate.  Even though I freed myself from the captivity of uncontrolled mental illness, of tobacco addiction, of self-harming…I still don’t trust that am capable.

Three degrees, the “dream job,” home ownership, pet ownership, good friends, amazing family… none of it feels like enough.  The overwhelming sense of inadequacy is startling.

I’ve been working really diligently to establish work-life balance.  I spent so much time trying to prove myself as a great trauma nurse, that I lost all of the other things.

Trying to push away the narrative of “slacker/lazy/stupid/unimpressive” that runs through my head, I directed all of my energy at being the best at what I do.

Spoiler alert, I’m still not the best at what I do, but nobody can pretend that I don’t try.

If three quarters of the Torah is made up of wandering the wilderness (See Jeffery Goldwasser’s piece here), then maybe it’s OK that so much of my life is spent feeling kind of lost.

As I wrestle with all of this, and come to terms with my feeling trapped in The Wilderness, I try to find grace with myself.

I’ve been sitting with the idea of grace for a while and admit that I feel a little squirmy when I say it because it’s not a word used in American Judaism very often.  Then I did some digging and found this amazing piece.

Grace, writes Rabbi Shapiro, is “God’s unlimited, unconditional, unconditioned, and all-inclusive love for all creation.” He adds that there is no one outside the reach of grace—“not the sinner, the heretic, the unbeliever, or the differently believing believer,” arguing that “there is nothing one can do to merit grace, earn grace, or even avoid grace.… Grace is unlimited and all-encompassing.”

So, in Hebrew we say chesed but ultimately, chesed is grace.   Luckily, I’ve been participating in the Counting of the Omer this year for the first time, and so this word, chesed, has been trickled onto my tongue over and over and over. The entire first week is devoted to a study of chesed.  Calendar courtesy of https://aleph.org/resources/omer-poster-colorful-omer-counting-chart

I am trying to find patience, grace, and acceptance within The Wilderness. I am wrestling with ego, shame, and fear.

I’ll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, if you’re also wandering, maybe I’ll see you out here and we can hold a little space for one another.

Oh, the Oprah quote that made me cry?

“There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling.  It’s why you were born.  And how you become most truly alive.”