The great thing about periods of desolation is that these are times that God is forming the soul to stand strong against the enemy. The time a soul spends in desolation provides insight and strength that can be used when the enemy attacks.
In a sense, look at Jesus in the desert or on Gethsemne. Here to some degree, our Lord faced times of desolation, ‘separation’ from the Father. In each instance, the trial He endured strengthened His for the next step. After the desert, He moved into His ministry and after Gethsemne, He faced His sorrowful passion. Each time after this desolation as He moved forward, He received consolation directly from the angels. I can’t see anyway that the angels weren’t there beside Him through both struggles but they were held back by the Father’s Divine Will in the Son’s mission. And for the soul in desolation, their guardian angel is not far off throughout and you can be assured of his ministrations as soon as you’ve passed through your desert time.
As my desolation became known to me, started to cry out from my soul for God to come to my aid. This is the time that the training truly began for me. Strength building can hurt and this time caused great stresses on my soul. But, it was a period of growth and strengthening for my soul. I see now that God has me in a forge to rend the impurities from my soul and show me my failure. The Holy Spirit didn’t show this to accuse or brand me a failure but to show me what both sides of this trust formula was like.
After this holy priest pulled me from my desolation, God quickly began to act in my soul. I moved into a great time of consolations. God showed me of my lack of trust but quickly started to rebuild that trust in unique ways. The first thing of course was my simple prayer of trust at night holding my crucifix, “Jesus I trust in You, Jesus I trust in You…”. Then He prompted a dear brother in Christ to invite me to give a talk on, what else? Trust! God had me look up the definition and then proceeded from there. Over the next few months, I began to trust Jesus in truth not just words.
He gave me a ‘final’ exam several years into my lessons that drew more strength from the prior desolation. In an dire illness again, my daughter lay in an ICU. I was able to pray over her, words of absolute trust in God’s Divine Will and Mercy. I gave control of what was truly beyond my control to the Father. Maybe I’ll tell that story someday soon….
Summed up, I guess I’m saying to simply trust in Jesus. The Father loves you more than you could ever conceive. Even with a thousand years to contemplate His love, we still won’t grasp even the surface level of his deeply He loves us. His whole goal is to bring us home to His side – that’s why His Son came…
He will work through ups and downs in our spiritual and physical lives to show us what He desires most, the way to fill the empty spot in our heart – Him!