Thoughts from a Prodigal Living in the Wilderness: Guest Post by Abigail Alleman

The term “prodigal” has meant different things over the years of my spiritual journey. When we prayed for someone rebelling and living far from God, my father would always refer to them as in the “far country.”

But, I also have learned of the Older Brother prodigal. I came to know this understanding mostly through Tim Keller’s book, ‘The Prodigal God.’ He talked about how the older son was in some ways even more lost than the younger, because he didn’t know he was lost. He thought he was home with the Father.

Yet, his heart was far from the Father’s as he made an idol of self-righteousness, expecting to get the Father’s things, yet not seeking the love relationship his Father wanted. I have certainly lived this kind of prodigal journey.

I think it is good, when we love “younger brother prodigals” or “traditional prodigals” living in the ‘“far country” to remember that our hearts often live a prodigal life, wanting everything but the home of rest and infinite love the Father gives. It feeds our compassion and maintains a softness yet passion for the return of the prodigals in our lives. This understanding has also been essential in a journey of self-compassion as I remember one of the hardest seasons of my life.

This season is described in my newly released book about my journey with mental illness, and how I lived in a sustained wilderness instead of resting in, being content and at home, in the Father’s love. Here is an excerpt from Chapter Four of my book: A Million Skies: Secure in God’s Strength When Your Mind Can’t Rest. This chapter is titled: Warm Hues Beckon: From Exile to Homecoming:

“The precarious nature of my mental health during this time was compounded by the fact that I was avoiding seeing a psychiatrist or even a family doctor regularly. These decisions led me into a lonely wilderness. My deep longing from those days could be summed up by Eva Hoffman in her memoir, Lost in Translation: ‘We want to be home in our tongue. We want to be able to give voice accurately and fully to ourselves and our sense of the world.’

“I was an exile who had lost my voice, my sense of worth, and—therefore—my place in the world. I became a stranger to myself and, gradually, to others. The loneliness of the wilderness does something to you. If you’re there too long, you begin to look for strength on your own. This will lead you even further away to the feeling of utter desolation, dust, and dry rivers.

“If you are like me, you try to eat the food of “capability” and drink from the river called ‘performance.’ Yet, you find no nourishment there, only judgment and a bereft spirit. Oh, how we need the living water of the grace of God. But oh, how we doubt that it is for us.

“Being human in this world means we spend at least some of our time wandering in the desert, east of God’s perfect Eden. Throughout the Bible, God tested his people in the wilderness, ‘to know what was in [their hearts]’ (Deut. 8:2). He wanted them to seek him above all others, to hunger and thirst for him as David did in the wilderness of Judah (Ps. 63:1), as Jesus in the wilderness of Judea (Matt. 4:1–11).

“Yet, so much of the time, instead of receiving the manna God gave, his people longed for the land of their slavery, Egypt. They wasted their wilderness, wanting everything but God, the only one who could truly satisfy.

“In the fall of 2013, I wanted to want God, I really did. Yet so much of my wandering came because I longed even more for the perfect image—to be seen as capable and put together. And God was not to be found there.

“Tim Keller reminds me of this truth when he says,

‘Home, then, is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true Selves. Yet it seems that no real place or actual family ever satisfies these yearnings, though many situations arouse them.’

“Our longing for home seems to promise only disappointment. As we are delivered into exile, we can wonder if God really cares about us, if he is truly for us. In this gap between longing and fulfillment, we must find our way to God. Yet, the great revelation is that two thousand years ago, he made his way to us.

“In order to better understand our longing and how God means to meet it, we have to go deeper into the pain of our brokenness. For me, this brokenness was bound up in mental illness, which brooded within me.

“But I had no idea how to really enter my own pain related to the undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which I carried around. I knew, in part, it meant I had to find a way to trust others to get past the damning judgment I believed I would receive for my failure to live up to their expectations. This sentiment shouted to me from the depths of my own self-condemnation.

As I move through these exile-driven sentiments toward Homecoming, I conclude the chapter with these thoughts:

“For each of us, whether we have been wounded by mental illness or by so many other life-altering hardships, our God is a healer. Through him we overcome. And we overcome by coming home. When he knocks, we open the door and welcome his presence into all the moments of our lives. We say yes to the new day, to the radiant sky.

“He wants us to not only come home but to embody home, where we will receive the clarity to see his good plans for us. Because they become like the gorgeous, garden-born fruit of Eden, our true home. And we trust this plenty is the truth we need. For in the plenty is life, is home.”

May we all gain greater understanding of the wilderness prodigals live in, so that we can truly come home ourselves and offer our open arms to all the prodigals destined to return home.

Abigail Alleman is a lover of words, of the vulnerable beauty of our stories which connect us as humanity, the image-bearers of God who are his exquisite work of redemption. She has just released her book, about her journey with mental illness, called ‘A Million Skies: Secure in God’s Strength When Your Mind Can’t Rest.’ Embodying hope guides her life as an author, speaker as well as a wife, mother to three and in her role in ministry to refugees which she shares with her husband.