When it comes to people, always guard your heart.

 Always.

You can never hide from God, and even though you may try, you cannot hide from your own ugly truths.  When you are hot, tired and emotional, your personality reflects all of those traits you work so hard to hide. The moral of this story is, when you treat people badly, at no matter what level, it’s hard to hide it in the desert.  And it comes at a great cost to everyone who is party to it and witnesses it.

To be persecuted against can mean many things. Sometimes it is extreme, and means to die for your cause. Sometimes it means you are treated unfairly for your belief. On occasion it happens because you refuse to conform to a standard that is not to your liking, nor is it biblical. In this case, it was the latter.

Feeling like everything you work toward is always being questioned by someone who should know better is awful. Knowing their feelings are being shared, quietly undermining everything you have prayed so hard for- Devastating. Completely devastating. With a few quiet conversations, a few validations and a few seeds of doubt, anyone can wreck anything for any person at any moment in time. All it takes is the careful manipulation and whispers of someone who, on the surface, looks to be a reputable resource.

Being undermined in this fashion feels like an anvil is placed to balance on your heart.

Having someone you once trusted and loved undermining your passion is indescribable. People are human. They screw things up on a regular basis. They create these little boxes and they want you to fit into them. When you do not fit because you believe differently, or because you have something they don’t, it ends badly every single time.  The reaction to jealousy is sometimes indifference, and sometimes it’s undermining.

The lesson for me has been to be super careful to guard my heart. I also feel a great responsibility to guard my husband’s heart. We had a plan. It fell apart. We stood and watched it unravel like a sweater with one loose thread. The scar it has left is huge, and will take some time to heal. Guarding my heart is hard- I am naturally inclined to share all of it with the people I am close to. In the desert that still small voice kept telling me to be quiet, do nothing, and say nothing. “Do not react to this”, the voice whispered on the wind.  So I stayed silent and aching.  I never knew other people saw the ugly until we returned from the trip. My validation came too late, but the understanding that I am not alone gives me hope.

Not hope for reconciliation, but hope for a future where I learn to guard my heart, my sharing is limited and my husband and I do what God calls us to do. Eventually the truth about people comes out. There is no hiding in the desert, and there is no hiding from Jesus either. He knows you- the real you- not the one you may show on the surface. He doesn’t care about your “box” or how much you want people to fit into it. He only wants your heart to be pure and intentional. He wants you to be you, not some facsimile. He expects us to be humble, honest and faithful. He expects us to treat one another like brothers and sisters, even when one of us has something the other wants. He wants to save us, and he wants us to allow him to do just that. He asks us to guard our hearts against those who will not, and he soothes them when they are broken.

Tune in next time as I wrap up this series, Three Things I Learned in the Desert.