Forty Years in the Desert: Why We Stay Stuck—and How God Uses the Season
The Israelites’ forty years in the desert remind us of a difficult truth: freedom on the outside does not immediately create freedom on the inside. They left Egypt quickly, but the fears, habits, and ways of thinking shaped by slavery followed them. When anxiety rose, they longed for what was familiar, even when it had once oppressed them.
This pattern is deeply human, and deeply relevant to mental health.
The Desert and the Mind: A CBT Perspective
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps us see how people get stuck through repeated loops of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In the desert, the Israelites often cycled through thoughts like “God has abandoned us,” which led to fear and anger, and then to complaining or rebellion. The loop reinforced itself.
We experience similar patterns today:
Automatic negative thoughts
Emotional distress
Avoidant or self-protective behaviors that bring short-term relief but long-term stagnation
CBT invites us not to panic or shame ourselves, but to slow the process down:
Notice the thought
Question its truth and usefulness
Practice a different response, even when emotions resist
Like the daily manna, healing usually happens incrementally, through repeated, faithful practice, not dramatic breakthroughs.
Not Getting Yourself Out of the Desert Too Quickly
One of the great temptations in the desert is the urge to escape it prematurely. The Israelites repeatedly tried to force relief, through complaints, shortcuts, or nostalgia for Egypt, instead of asking what the season was meant to form in them.
We do the same. When distress rises, we rush to numb, distract, control, or fix. From a CBT perspective, this often shows up as avoidance behaviors. From a Thomistic perspective, it is the will fighting reality rather than cooperating with it.
To embrace the desert does not mean liking it or becoming passive. It means remaining present, asking different questions:
What is God inviting me to trust right now?
What virtue is being formed through this limitation?
What small, faithful step is possible today?
God did not rush the Israelites through the desert. He walked with them daily, forming a people capable of freedom. In the same way, mental and spiritual healing often unfolds not by forcing ourselves out of a season, but by allowing God to work within it.
A Word of Consolation
If you feel stuck, it does not mean you are failing. It may mean you are being formed. The desert is not the absence of God, it is often where trust, endurance, and rightly ordered desire are slowly learned.
You do not need to get yourself out of the desert.
You are invited to walk with God where you are, and grow there.
