Becoming Un-Lost
“Okay…which way are we gonna turn next?” my (former park ranger) dad would ask me. Entranced by the dust devils swirling in the distance and tumbleweeds dancing and jumping across the deep ditches, those words always snapped me back to reality. I didn’t know. I never knew. We were usually on our way to my grandparents’ house in west Texas when I’d get this question, and yes, I’d made the trip more times than I could count. I always knew we were getting close when I could smell oil, but how we’d gotten that far, I had no idea. So it became regular practice, quizzing me on road trips and making me read the map. I cannot adequately express the amount of concentration and educated guessing it required, and even then, I was pretty much never correct.
You could blindfold Dad, march him down to a windowless room, spin him around 10 times and he’d still be able to tell you which way’s north. From right here on my couch, you’d have to give me a minute to “never-eat-sour-wheat” before I could even give you my best guess. Dad was part of the Search and Rescue team at a national park, often carrying lost, injured people down snowy mountains on his actual back, while I regularly trek around entire malls because I can’t remember where I parked. I’m guaranteed to turn the wrong way when I come out of an elevator, and I won’t even tell you how long I searched for my car at the airport one time. After entering probably my fourth parking garage, mashing my key fob every few steps, I finally heard a faint beep in the distance. It took me an unfortunate amount of time to then realize that my car was actually two floors above me.
As a child, I received multiple compasses as gifts, and when I started driving, my parents immediately put a GPS device in my glovebox. I still live in fear of the words, “Oh, actually, Google Maps won’t take you to my house, let me write down the directions for you.” If you say this to me, while I may appear outwardly collected, know that inside I am panicking and rethinking my decision to go to your house at all. (No offense.) A friend of mine once said to me, “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve truly felt ‘turned around,’ and it was really kind of scary for me. I was so anxious.” I told him, “Imagine feeling that way literally always.” He gave me a consoling half-smile and shook his head, “I really can’t imagine. That’s awful.”
‘Tis! But! Like anyone, I’ve figured out ways to compensate for my shortcomings, like keeping mental (or physical) pictures of landmarks, leaving notes on my phone of which floor in the garage I’m parked on, or having Siri remind me which entrance I used at Macy’s. (“Siri, in one hour, remind me that I came in the door by the mannequins in swimsuits.”) Taylor Swift said it best: I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try.
We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose, but what I lack in directional comprehension, I make up for in adaptability and a can-do spirit. This is probably why, when I traveled to Washington, D.C. alone for the first time for a “young leaders” conference, I found my 18-year-old self unofficially dubbed the team navigator. (I know, right?) By no means did I ask for this responsibility, but you know what they say about some people just having greatness thrust upon them. Armed with nothing but a little paper map from an outdoor visitor’s booth and the entirely misplaced confidence of my peers, I managed to lead a group of teenagers all over Capitol Hill as we met with our respective state representatives and learned about the Farm Bill and why we should all become lobbyists. I’m proud to report that, because God still works miracles, no soldier was left behind and we somehow made it to every destination on time.
Growing up in a place too small for even a stoplight, you can probably imagine the learning curve I dealt with when it came to things like, say, freeways, access roads, and public transportation. And you can probably imagine, too, my parents’ reluctance to send me out into the world knowing I couldn’t find my way out of a wet paper bag. But nevertheless, we’ve all persisted, and I’ve spent a decade as a living, breathing case study in what it means to become un-lost.
This is the second time I’ve lived in Dallas, which is the fourth city I’ve lived in altogether, and I am in my third home since I got here. I moved here the first time in 2014 for an internship that introduced me to chiggers, the humid summers, perpetual road construction, and perhaps most notably, my first car break-in.
The sight of broken glass, when it looks just right (whatever that means), still takes me back to that Sunday morning in a parking garage, exactly 418 miles from home, my window in a million pieces on the ground in front of me, my wallet, ID, everything — gone. As Taylor said: “Long story short, it was a bad time.” After a moment of panic, I brushed the glass out of my seat with a towel and drove it to the parking lot down the block where a nice window repairman in overalls showed me a lot of kindness and reassured me I was actually going to live through this moment. He could’ve lectured me about leaving valuables in the car (don’t worry, I haven’t done it since!), but instead he said, “This happens more than you’d think. It happens to people who’ve lived here their whole lives! And I know it’s stressful, but it’s gonna be okay!”
That oddly formative moment, most days, feels decades away but my bones remember the acute sense of alienness, outsider-ness, lostness that I felt. In that moment but also in that whole season of life, everything was just so unfamiliar. Every step, it felt, required careful navigation. And I often found myself relying on the mercy of others to help me get where I needed to go — geographically but also emotionally, spiritually, relationally.
Since then, I’ve left and come back and cut some losses and driven miles and miles, getting myself good and lost (on purpose) so I could practice getting un-lost. I wore the roads out, determined to find my way around because I read somewhere that you know you’re officially a local when someone asks you for directions in your city and you’re able to give them. The first time I heard myself confidently say, “You’ll head north up such-and-such highway, take the such-and-such exit, and make a left at the light,” felt like winning the Lewis & Clark Olympic Medal. That moment alone made up for all the times I misread the map and lost my car in the Target parking lot. “I am definitely a local now,” I thought, “so seasoned and brilliant and self-sufficient.”
It’s not something I’ve experienced very many times — probably because most people just use their GPS nowadays (besides, of course, my dad, who doesn’t trust Siri as far as he can throw her and won’t leave home without a dining table-sized atlas) but nevertheless, sometimes you hear words coming out of your mouth and you didn’t even know they lived in your brain. These days, I increasingly hear myself saying goodbye to things that aren’t for me even when I am not sure what is. I hear myself requiring more, expecting more. I hear myself asking questions without feeling shame over it. I think what I’m saying is I’m the most myself that I have ever been, and that I feel like a local in my own skin for the first time. I am learning my way around all the versions of myself I’ve been and the one that I’m becoming, and I think a lot about that line in Lover: “Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?”
A former pastor of mine used to say, “You will be given the grace to live the life you are called to. You will be able to do what you are meant to do,” and it’s always stuck with me. It crossed my mind as I reflected on the time I found myself on a (very) wrong bus in Dublin. Not surprisingly, the kid entranced by dust devils still doesn’t have the answer to, “Which way are we gonna turn next?” Eventually things started to look extremely wrong, and I knew that no matter how long I rode that wrong bus, it was never going to magically find its way to my correct route. No way around it — I had to step off into the pouring rain. I walked miles upon soggy miles before finally getting my bearings, tired and drenched but finally headed in the right direction and I wonder if you need to hear today that walking through a storm down the right road is better than riding in comfort down the wrong one.
I ask because as I close in on just over a year of recovery from a very particular brand of burnout and sky-high anxiety, the feeling is finally coming back to my completely-shot nerves and I find myself grateful that God did not allow me to settle for the comfortable boredom I begged for. I ask because I am finally beginning to see that, even in these woods, even when I did not have the strength or wherewithal to go looking for it, the light came looking for me. I ask because the grace for the life I’ve been called to continues to find me, and I’m confident it’ll find you too, if you’ll just be willing to step out into the storm. I ask because, from here, I can see that the years have always been peppered generously with joy and relief and beauty — even as I hiked up asphalt hills with wet jeans and no cell phone.
I used to picture “the life I am called to” as some big, abstract destination, but now I see that this very moment — this very breath — is also the life I’m called to, and grace allows me to simply put one foot in front of the other. To have a hard conversation. To release resentment and the need for control. To step into the rain and trust that it’s the better choice. To believe that it really is both as simple and as grand as that.
For the better part of the last two years, I felt like Sandra Bullock in Bird Box when she was violently rowing upstream through rapids — blindfolded — waiting to encounter a new, mysterious monster around each corner while fear slowly morphed into numbness. I’m sure I’m in good company as everybody seems to be wearing exhaustion like a winter coat. Like Taylor, we keep asking if we’re out of the woods yet — and the answer keeps being no. But I noticed one day in October that grace had made me okay, perhaps for the first time, knowing that some people have angry thoughts about me, are disappointed in me, confused by me. As if almost overnight, grace allowed me to understand that being good is not the same thing as being quiet or shrinking down or staying out of the way.
To have needs, opinions, to take up space, does not make one bad or unlovable or difficult or entitled. And to kindly and gently walk away from those who might believe that it does, is to know a very special kind of liberation. A liberation so sweet they should bottle it and sell it as both a perfume and a dessert. A liberation so intrinsic not even the most practiced thief or the loudest bully can steal it. A liberation so powerful it will replace fear as the compass of your life.
I was among the many who took a hard right turn in Season 1 of the pandemic after slowing down long enough to realize I’d been living in a tired fog for a long time. And even as I stood over a new metaphorical pile of broken glass with no idea what to do next, priorities began to fall into place and I knew going back wasn’t an option. The grace for the life I’ve been called to was on my heels. Along the windy way, I tried new things, dreamed new dreams, and miraculously, I moved forward. Miraculously, I turned down invitations and opportunities and refused to let money, certainty, or people with stronger personalities and louder voices make my decisions for me. I walked away, and I remembered how profoundly good it felt to become un-lost.
Recently, I connected with a former teacher of mine who told me once that I could do whatever I wanted to do, and I don’t think that’s true, but I believe now that I can do what I am meant to do. I do not know a single person who can do whatever they want to do. I do not think you can either. But I do think you have — or will have — the capacity to do the things you are meant to do. I think you will hear yourself saying things you didn’t know lived in your brain. If you are lost, I think you will become un-lost — whether you are searching for your car or your passion or your life’s purpose.
I don’t know what you need today or where you should go, but the best part of where you are is that you can start from there. And if you lose your way, I’m living, breathing proof that you can always, always get back on track. Wear the roads out as you become a local in the city of your own skin. There’s time for grace to find you — even now, even here. Perhaps it’s time to try something new, to discover exactly how much you are capable of, to step off the bus into the storm. Or perhaps it’s time to stop for just a moment, breathe, and watch the tumbleweeds dance.
"I wonder if you need to hear today that walking through a storm down the right road is better than riding in comfort down the wrong one." wonderful! KK in Clovis