Lostness
About 20 years ago, (Wow . . . I’m getting old), I was in a bridal party for one of our friends. The wedding rehearsal was late afternoon and my husband was at work so I brought our sons with me. They were 5 and 6 years old and willing to come along for the ride.
However, aside from the fact that my phone was only a phone, and in my DNA I was already bad with directions, the church was in a part of our city that had multiple one way streets and bridges across the river. If you missed a turn, you’d head across the river and onto a one-way street. If you didn’t get the right road back then you’d head back across the river onto the other side. And so ya, I went back and forth across the river at least three times. I was trying to be cool about it but my kids were clearly getting frustrated for and with me as they watched me squirm.
Finally, I stopped. I pulled into a gas station and explained my predicament to the cashier. He helped me understand where I was, what I was doing wrong and how to get to my destination. We got to the rehearsal just slightly late and the kids had a good laugh later as they told their Dad about how stressed Mom was.
Unknowns, uncertainty, foggy weather and a foggy future is like being lost. New stages of life with no worn path to follow, no step by step plan, just new flat ground to step on with no idea what comes next.
In her book, “An Altar in the World”, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about embracing lostness instead of fighting it and using it as a spiritual practice. She describes how many wandering, wilderness experiences there are in Scripture and how it always led to significant, life-altering changes. And she describes people in the world who are now living in extreme lostness as they are removed from their homes, or surviving in the middle of a war, or trying to escape one country only to be rejected or detained by another. They understand lostness in severe ways that many of us don’t. But our lostness still feels severe to us:
“Even if the odds were against you, there is something holy in this moment of knowing just how perishable you are. It is part of the truth about what it means to be human, however hard most of us work not to know that. “
An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor
So, yeah, okay Heather, this all sounds good, but how? How does one find holiness in the lostness? How do we stop panicking and frantically seeking answers and direction? Isn’t being lost supposed to trigger a figure-it-out response?
Yes, we can’t avoid lostness. We will always run into new path-less territory. So instead of trying to avoid or deny or feel ashamed that it happens, we can do this:
Pull over.
We just need to pull the car over, put it in park and turn it off. We need to sit there and admit we are lost. We have to be willing to ‘waste time’ in order to get our bearings. This might mean taking an hour or an afternoon to sit quietly with a journal and do some writing, empty our brains and see what is in there. Take inventory, stop trying to cover up the anxious feeling with activity. Look at it. Call it by name.
Ask for help.
Admitting we are lost also means that we need to rely on someone else’s help. It might mean spending money to see a counsellor or asking a good friend to help us process things. We may need to read a book, sit with a mentor who has gone before us and ask for directions. It is humbling, but so, so good.
Accept it.
Although I didn’t love hearing my kids later describe to my husband how funny it was to see me so stressed out, it was also an opportunity to model lostness as part of life. It really is nothing to be ashamed of. If we treat it as a normal life-thing, then we don’t have to be traumatized each time we feel uncertain, uneasy or unsure. “Ah, yes”, we’ll say, “this unfamiliar territory feels familiar”. We begin to accept lostness as common and as a clue that we are still alive, still human and still not in control. This is that holy place where things begin to change!
If you are in a place of lostness, and feel like you could use some support, feel free to contact me. One of the things I do offer is spiritual direction, which is similar to a life-coach but for your faith life. I listen to you, ask you questions, help you see and define where you are in life. Most importantly, I encourage you to learn to listen for God’s guidance as you ‘pull over’ and slow down. You may not be as lost as you think. And if you are, it may not be for much longer. Spiritual direction is like someone coming to sit with you once you’ve pulled over.
(If this interests you, here’s more information.).
Take care friends, I pray that you will sense God’s deep desire to love you wherever you are in life right now.
I leave you with this cool glass of water, (or coffee) whatever seems most comforting. :) Psalm 71