The Wilderness Experience: Signposts of the Spirit’s Work in the Suffering of Those We Serve

There exists a kind of personal experience I like to refer to as “the wilderness.” People experiencing the wilderness are often intensely lonely and unsure which direction their life may be going; they may be experiencing a deep feeling of separation from God, others, or even their own identity. This wilderness experience is often triggered by a stressful life event, such as the dissolution of a relationship, a major health crisis, or personal trauma. This wilderness is intensely personal, and it extends to one’s community, relationships, vocation, and emotional well-being. This wilderness is an encompassing, full-faceted place. Moving in any direction seems scary, sometimes pointless, and ultimately bewildering. In my work as a licensed psychologist and therapist, I often meet people experiencing this wilderness, and the search for meaning and connection that comes with it. I also have witnessed the massive potential for psychological and spiritual growth that occurs in the wilderness—growth that is intimately connected to the work of the Holy Spirit, as God works in the midst of our human suffering to bring us into union with Godself. Healers of all kinds, including chaplains, therapists, and ministers, ought to learn to recognize the signs of this wilderness, and the potential for God’s work in the hearts of those who are suffering.

St. John of the Cross, a Spanish Catholic priest and mystic, refers to this kind of personal experience as “the dark night of the soul”:¹ an intense, often bewildering feeling of separation from God, in which all feelings of love from God are cut off. Yet I like to use the metaphor of spiritual surgery, in which God might actually be doing a deeper work in the human heart that will eventually create union with the Lord, though it feels like anesthesia or loneliness in the present. This assumes that God is an active God, at work in our hearts, ready to do the deep work. The dark night of the soul concept presupposes that our relationship with the Lord is ultimately about union with the Lord, and such union comes from a process of spiritual refinement. We are not always aware of much of this spiritual refinement, though sometimes we are aware of a deep longing to connect with God that may not seem fulfilled. From this experience, the question may arise for the believer: If God wants a deeper connection and union with me, why do I feel so disconnected from God? St. John of the Cross believed this deep desire for God cannot be consummated until God works this deeper spiritual refinement within us. As fallen creatures, we are not born with the ability to connect with God on the deep level of union that we long for. We must get out of the way and allow God to do the work in us that will result in union with God.

Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest and writer, recounts an experience of deep, longstanding depression and self-doubt that riddled him with questions about who he was meant to be—and whether God truly loved him. Recounting this period, Nouwen describes the deep, inner voice of God that spoke to him about who he was meant to be and reminded him of the unconditional love of God.² Nouwen wrestled with pervasive feelings of shame, doubt, fear, and depression on a daily basis for years, even as he heard God speaking with a voice of love and acceptance. This period for Nouwen was not one of instant or immediate transformation; rather, it was an experience of suffering, wrestling, questioning, and gradual change. In his wilderness, Nouwen experienced a gradual, deeper, fuller understanding of who God is, God’s unconditional love, and the location of personal identity in the love of Christ.

The wilderness is an experience Jesus himself relates to. Matthew 4:1–11 recounts the story of Jesus led by the Holy Spirit into the literal wilderness, where he was tempted to depart from the mission God had for him. When I read the story, I imagine Jesus’ physical body reaching its breaking point and his emotions experiencing excruciating suffering. Similarly, the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane paints a picture of emotional and mental agony, as the Son asks the Father to take the cup of suffering from him. Jesus nevertheless surrenders to the Father’s plan, making the way for our union with our loving God.

In my private practice as a clinical psychologist, I often work with therapy clients for months or even years. I see gradual change over a long period of time. Deep seated insecurities, doubts about identity, and lack of sense of purpose are all areas that change and develop. I have also seen this in short-term situations where I only meet with a client for a limited number of sessions. Often, loneliness, doubt, and depression are catalysts and fertile ground for this deeper change to occur. Many clients have spiritual and religious doubts about who God is and whether God will protect them from trauma, or they may ask deep existential questions about why God did not stop a trauma they have already experienced.

In these situations, a therapist’s tools are helpful, but I do not rely solely on my training and expertise. The deeper work of God is the ultimate focus of my vocation. This posture allows me to accept that God is an active God, working in my clients whether they realize it or not, and inviting me to take part in that. God’s work of union and spiritual refinement is not something that I analyze or quantify. Rather, it is something that I recognize is likely occurring in my clients. My response to this recognition is to surrender my work and my clients to God, in partnership. I use the skills and tools I have learned as ministry and service to the Lord and to my clients, and I try to get out of the way of what the Holy Spirit is doing.

God invites us therapists, chaplains, and healers to see our work as ministry, to participate in the work God is doing in this world and in our clients. Surrendering our work to the Holy Spirit, knowing that we are a part of the bigger work of the Lord, and leaving the outcome to God, are three of the most important pillars of our vocational call. Our respective professions have our own approaches to this, but the ultimate endgame is in God’s hands. When clients come to us in the wilderness, we are able to say “welcome.”

As God works in all of us to bring us to closer union with Godself, we recognize this movement toward the Lord occurs across the span of a life. Periods of loneliness and isolation may be triggered by any number of things—a pandemic, a major trauma, life stress, broken relationships, a health crisis, etc. Despite what event or trigger may send a client into a tailspin of depression and isolation, our job is to keep our eyes on the larger spiritual picture of what God may be doing. In that sense, therapists, chaplains, ministers, and healers all share a common outlook and vision of the greater growth and pilgrimage our patients, clients, or congregants may be experiencing. This is true of clients who believe in God and those who do not. God is a pursuer of hearts, after all.

The wilderness is a disorienting place. Filled with no definite answers, with loss of sense of purpose or direction, with doubt about what was once known or understood. The wilderness is an intensely uncomfortable place. We are taken from our life rhythms and daily comforts, and depression is often on our doorstep. Being lost in the wilderness can seem like a rock-bottom experience of disorientation and disconnection. Life-giving self-care routines may no longer bring centeredness. The mundane joys of life may now simply be mundane. The fullness of life may be gone, replaced by a sense of inadequacy, thinness, and lack of answers. No easy fix exists for the wilderness experience. Many of our clients and patients may come to us for help and quick relief. We cannot promise such quick fixes because that is neither realistic nor ultimately helpful.

So what, then, do we do with this complex, confounding, disorienting, and lonely experience we may encounter in ourselves and our clients? I offer some thoughts, based on my experience as a psychologist and therapist, and as someone who has himself been in the wilderness.

First, we should avoid quick fixes. Applying a light bandage to a deep, profound experience will do nothing of significance in the long run. We want to help our clients embrace the growth opportunities of the wilderness, not encourage them to run from it or avoid the deeper work.

Second, we should encourage our clients to engage the psychological pain. When clients engage their own pain with a level of acceptance, examination, and openness, they gain new acceptance for their true identities in the Lord, and they enter into the fertile ground tilled by the Holy Spirit. Acceptance often goes hand in hand with listening, welcoming, and surrendering. Even if the client or patient is not a believer, this posture of acceptance can lead to an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Third, we hold the complexities of the wilderness with, and for, our clients. As chaplains, therapists, and ministers, we have the unique opportunity to see the bigger picture that is often unavailable to our patients. We are shepherds, guides, and healers. We can practice psychotherapy, chaplaincy, or ministry with one foot in the space of the client’s pain and one foot in the larger spiritual and theological understanding of how God often works in people. We essentially hold the client in a healing relationship with ourselves and with God, and we can invite the Holy Spirit to work in the client’s life.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of psychotherapy I practice in which the therapy client is invited to stop fighting, running from, or ignoring their private inner experience (their thoughts, feelings, traumas, doubts, etc.). The client is invited to welcome their inner experiences, accept them, and listen to what they may be saying about them. This promotes wholeness and the client’s ability to welcome psychological pain while refocusing on their values and directions in life consistent with those values. In essence, the client moves away from spending all their energy on fighting or avoiding their inner experiences and instead focuses on accepting who they are, while moving toward directions in life that are meaningful and consistent with their values. This posture of acceptance and listening can be incredibly fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to work in ourselves and our clients.

I once provided psychotherapy to a client who did not identify as a spiritual or religious person, and specifically informed me that discussion of spirituality or religion was not something she wanted in therapy.³ She was coming to therapy for deep-seated depression that had robbed her of her physical mobility, self-respect, and energy. Once active in her community and heavily involved with community-focused projects, she now spent most of her days in bed, depressed, lonely, and full of self-doubt at the core of her identity. Circumstances beyond her control had triggered this massive depression. Respecting her wishes, we did not discuss religion or spirituality throughout the course of several months of weekly therapy sessions. Instead, we focused on decreasing her depression and empowering her to resume a healthy, active life. We focused on addressing her self-doubt and identity issues through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Before or after each session, I would privately pray for the client and ask God to lead our sessions and help the client in whatever way she needed, but we did not include any religious or spiritual interventions or discussion in session, at her request. By the end of the course of treatment, her depression had largely remediated, she was resuming an active lifestyle, and her identity-related doubts had been replaced with evidence-based thoughts about who she was. In our final session she presented me with a homemade card, which included words and expressions she found significant or related to her experience of therapy. Occupying the center of the card, the phrase “child of God” stood out. She told me how much therapy meant to her and how each of these expressions captured her experience. It was evident to me that the Holy Spirit had profoundly worked in the client’s inner distress, self-doubt, isolation, and depression. The client had received the message that she was a child of God, though we never spoke of spiritual or religious matters in therapy. In the midst of this client’s wilderness experience, the Holy Spirit had been at work.

I would encourage all of us—chaplains, therapists, ministers, and healers—to embrace and welcome the Lord’s work in the wilderness experience. We will encounter many people whose lives have been shattered by trauma, depression, isolation, and broken relationships. The healing experience accomplished through ministry, therapy, and healing interventions is incredibly fertile soil for the work of the Holy Spirit. We don’t need to understand it all. Our calling is to welcome the Holy Spirit into the work we do, knowing that a deeper union with God may be possible, in part, because of this.