I arrive

I get lost too often.

I got lost today driving home for Christmas break.  

Instead of taking the highway, I decided to abandon familiarity and make use of my GPS.  It led me through back roads, quaint towns, dirt paths, and eventually an empty field that it fondly dubbed, “Home”.  

I ended up in northeast Michigan; I’m from northwest Indiana.

I assure you, I did not have the incorrect address, nor did the kind virtual British woman ever cry out “recalculating” at any point along my journey.  I can’t entirely blame her though; I’d realized early on in the trip that I recognized nothing around me, yet I didn’t care.  I just…kept going.  For the first time in a long time, I took in everything around me without distraction or worry.  I marveled at Creation.  I did not want to return to West Michigan, nor did I have a burning desire to end up in Indiana.  Somehow, though, I still sought solace in the simple assumption that I’d be led home eventually.  Yet when I arrived at that field, my knees went weak with confusion.  I wanted to sob, but decidedly allowed myself to cry a single sweet tear before I headed back toward the town I’d seen a couple miles earlier.

I turned off my GPS as I stopped for gas and bought a cigar.  I then retreated to a park across the way.  As I walked through some beautiful trails of this completely unfamiliar town, I lit the cigar and took everything in.  It was, in a way, a celebration; a christening of something new as I let go of a semester of broken dreams and dark valleys.  Like two old friends who meet to reminisce, I shared a cigar with the God who holds all facets of my everything, every day, everywhere. 

I walked a lot.  I cried a lot. I prayed a lot.  I learned a lot. 

I made my way back to the car, turned on my GPS, looked up, and said, “Please take me home this time.”  And after two and a half additional hours of open road and Tom Petty, I arrived in Indiana with a clear mind and fresh Michigan donuts for my family.  

I’ll never know why my GPS malfunctioned.  I won’t understand why today of all days I avoided the highway.  But above all, I’ll forever fail to comprehend how being somewhere unfamiliar was the most at home I’d felt in a long time.

I think the reason is this: “home” is woven snugly within wherever we end up.  Destinations are not of our design, but rather held by a Father whose means of arrival appears far less direct and arguably more complicated than any journey I’d plan for myself.  Getting lost along those dirt roads and sharp turns affected me more beautifully than my precious, over-traveled highways.  It was in the crazy journey that I extracted a beautiful peace about life and everything within it.  We end up where we’re intended.

And whether we’re lost or home, life is too short and the world is too huge for us to be consumed by anything other than a God that is too good.  

I expect

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” –Woody Allen

Writing on the basis of that statement, I’d arguably be God’s favorite comedian.

However, I’m not going to claim myself as a planner, for I’m something far worse. I’m something that puts me in graver danger than a girl who merely plans: I’m a girl who expects. And when expectation and reality fail to align, I wind up shaken, sitting silently in the very predicament that has loudly introduced itself to me multiple times before.  It’s a condition that with every new encounter only reinforces the fact that I can work in accordance to plans set out for me, or stumble along the courses that I pave for myself.  

That’s me today: trying to conceive a post-wreckage course of action. 

I can just see God up there, laughing at all of the things I think I want.  He cracks a smile at my meager desires as they cease to even begin comparing to what’s really in store.   He probably chuckles each time I believe in an outcome, snickering at its lack of wonder.  I imagine He releases a deep belly laugh with every plan, notion, idea or self-constructed conjecture.  He laughs until those self-proclaimed dreams become self-inflicted pain.  Then, I imagine He cries right alongside me when my illusions are shattered and my heart breaks big.   It’s an odd thing: a God who laughs and cries with us, but I think He really does.  Among the comedic chaos and humbling sobs that accompany broken agendas, I think He tries to speak:

“If you can succeed so greatly in the light, imagine shining in the darkness. If you love the wrong things so deeply, imagine how much you’ll love the right ones.  If you are already content in a life cultivated by you, imagine a life created by me.  Just imagine.  Please, just imagine."

We are classic comedic fools when we strive for our own expectations.  These things are laugh-worthy because we don’t see them, and they are worth our tears for that exact same reason.  It’s a complexity in which we’re called to seek refuge.  In seeking, we’re compelled to hold our breath and trust that things are beyond our control.  
Yes, loosening our grip seems as though we're allowing ourselves to be swallowed whole by the flood of our expectations.  The paradoxical truth, though, is this: it’s the very thing that keeps us afloat.

I run

They rose, then they slipped.
My feelings, I mean.  They rose from my heart to my head.  My mind snatched them up in a swoop not much different from that of an eagle preying upon a small mouse.  That was my brain: a quick silent bird who, (in one clean swoop), could clutch tightly to my meek feelings in order to make sense of them.  And with just that one single swoop, my feelings and ideas rose.  

They rose to become thoughts.   

Then they slipped down.

Those thoughts slipped violently from my mind back to my heart, engraving themselves upon every facet within me, writing an emotional explanation on layer upon layer of the tissue that comprised my ferociously beating core.  Those feelings, you see, grew the second I acknowledged them.  They thrived the second I acknowledged them.  They were finally more than minuscule emotions the day that they rose and slipped.  Having risen and having slipped, they no longer existed as tiny ideas, but rather bold statements cemented upon my mind and heart.  

Then they sat.

They sat comfortably within my mind and heart, too lazy to move forward in any manner.  There is safety in sitting comfortably, you see.  When you sit comfortably, the way those thoughts so willingly did inside of me, vulnerability is never an issue.  You avoid the potential perilous path that your life possibly-maybe-perhaps might take.  Life is one giant trade off, and you sacrifice security and assurance if you leave your box of comfort.  My heart and mind are the Mike Tysons of fighting risk; they are champions at remaining contained in that box.  But one day, that same racing heart within me and that same persistent mind of mine grew indifferent to comfort.

And again, they rose, this time knocking.

"Hey! Over here!" they'd scream whenever I pushed them aside; whenever I myself strived so hard to continue sitting comfortably.  I so badly wanted to avoid potential misfortune, that I went south if my thoughts went north; I went right if they went left.  And just as I'd begin to say "Man, I'm getting really good at dodging the many bullets of the human heart", I'd hear a knock on the door, open it with caution, only see the last two people I wanted to see: my stupid mind and my stupid heart.  And they knocked on my door as persistently as an insurance salesman: frequently and with promise, every time.  And so they rose…and kept rising…until they slipped past my lips, out into the open air.

They slipped out.

I remember the breath behind my words  as it pressed against my lips, eventually pushing past without any formal farewell.  It was almost as though my heart marched right up to my brain and said "It's been great, but maybe it's time we start seeing other people."   What had been written inside of me was now floating in space.  It was like how you see your breath fog in the winter; I watched every word slip out. 

Every. Single. Word.   

And so, you see, my feelings were the commencement of this process. 

They rose, becoming thoughts.   They slipped down.  They sat.  

Then, they rose, becoming words.  They slipped out.  And they sat once more.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

They sat upon paper.  And then, I ran.

Go figure. 

Even after my heart and mind are as apparent to the world as they are to me, I still run. 

In fact, I think that is when I run the fastest.