defining lost
Some of it I'll attribute to living a certain way for much of your adult life, and then suddenly not … at least not in the same way. Some of it I'll attribute to what I understand of conventional "writers block". The rest I'll attribute to a sense of being somewhat lost. Lost in a sense of trying to figure out new environments and new ways of living. Lost in a sense of navigating uncharted waters of life in the pastoral arts. Lost in the midst of the deconstruction of learned and lived ministry relentlessly pursuing Jesus into the void. The short of it is that for much of these months it seems that I've been a wandered.
Fortunately, as Tolkien and my wife have been known to say, "not all who wander are lost". I grew up with a love for stomping through the wilderness of the Adirondacks in northern New York. I am blessed with an internal compass and notable sense of direction. I am an observer of details. I recognize and mentally catalogue landmarks. Odds are that if I've ever been there, I could always find my way back. I've never truly been lost. My assumption though is that lost happens when your sense of direction fails, landmarks aren't recognized, and maps are not available. You literally have no idea where you are. Even though I've never been lost in a physical sense, I had ingrained in my inner consciousness that, in the event you become lost, the worst thing you could do is panic.
If I'm honest, there have been a number of times over these months I could point to where, quite possibly, feelings of lostness have led to a sense of panic. Now panic, I have been told, when one is physically lost, results initially in an overwhelming desire to flee. In retrospect I can tell you that there is a very similar reaction when you feel spiritually or even professionally lost. When you are lost in the unfamiliar, your first and sometimes overwhelming desire is to flee back to the familiar. This can have disastrous effects in the case of someone physically lost … mostly because you have obliterated any possible starting place for someone who may be trying to find you. In this other, non physical form of lostness, fleeing looks more like wandering. In fact, to those on the outside, it may look downright flighty or irresponsible. At the very least it can be uncomfortable to witness. From the outside it can be difficult to surmise if someone is truly lost or merely wandering. I've lived this for awhile, always with my own internal question … am I wandering or am I really just lost?
This morning I stumbled upon something I can cling to that settles the panic I have been fending off.
In a morning reading from the journals of Thomas Merton I encountered his own struggle with a desire to flee … culminating with his resolution that "He has put me in this place because He wants me in this place, and if He ever wants to put me anywhere else, He will do so in such a way that will leave no doubt as to who is doing it". Rarely in recent memory has anything so resonated with me. Of course, I can, in my life wanderings and circumstances, certainly relate to this. The question immediately became this … can I really be lost when all along the one who put me here knows exactly where I am? Not likely ... In all of our greatest moments as well as the least … as long as we've been attempting to follow … we have seen undoubtedly how we've gotten there … the "in between and in the midst of " can often get murky and cause us to wander, but even then He knows exactly where I am … and that is still ok.
Comments