One Who Wrestles With God
“From now on, your name will no longer be Jacob. You will be called Israel, because you have wrestled with God and with men, and you have won.”—Genesis 32:24-28
A Morning Altar that I made on the burn scare of the Tabernacle tent that was up all summer
October 20th, 2025
📍Salida, Colorado, USA 🇺🇸
Greetings from the wilderness!
It was in the fevered delirium of COVID last week that I found myself wrestling with God. Not in anger, but in literal ache. In the wilderness of my own body at a scorching 102 degrees.
The mystics say that God is closest in our undoing. That sickness, silence, and solitude can become thresholds. Julian of Norwich saw visions of divine love while lying near death from the plague. St. Teresa of Ávila’s ecstasies came through a frail and fevered body. Mechthild of Magdeburg wrote that “the soul is only strengthened through struggle.”
As my fever burned, I met that struggle firsthand—the tension between surrender and survival, between pleading for relief and trusting the Presence that never left. My body became both battlefield and sanctuary.
In the desert of illness, I practiced surrendering the illusion of control. I could do nothing but rest and accept that this was going to work out for my good in some way—Finding gratitude for closed doors and breathing in the fresh air of opened windows.
After a year of wandering the spiritual wilderness, like Jacob in the desert, I’ve learned what it means to wrestle with God—it is not rebellion, but staying in the communion with God when you could turn away. Standing in the Light when you would rather hide in the dark. It is to let the pain speak its own language until revelation emerges. It is to awaken, limp and changed, blessed for having dared to be authentic and vulnerable with your Creator.
Perhaps that is what the mystics knew all along: that sometimes the only way to find YHWH is through the body that breaks, the fever that humbles, and the desert that strips us down to the soul.
I’m looking forward to Utah and Arizona this weekend, and hopefully I will be able to share pictures with you from the Grand Canyon.
With Love,
Jennifer
P.S.—I’d love to hear from YOU! Rather than emailing me or dropping me a DM, please post a comment below 👇
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