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.