Lost

The plan was perfect. The four of us left the conference center, ready to cast aside the three days of sitting in a cold room, listening to cold speakers. Once a year we gathered for our discipline's major conference and once a year, we caught up with each other. Literally coming from North, South, East, West, it was a time to renew our friendship, a friendship borne out of the trauma of graduate school. And though we were now at varying stages of our careers and lives, we looked forward to this annual ritual of leaving the conference behind, finding a great restaurant, and getting to know each other once again.

We piled into the rental car, a brand new model equipped with a turn-by-turn navigation system. Ever the cautious one, I had even come prepared with a printed copy of directions from MapQuest. Between the four of us, we were equipped to navigate the streets of this unfamiliar city with GPS, cell phones, MapQuest, and laptops. Between the four of us, we had 15 post-secondary degrees from some of the most elite universities in the world. Between the four of us, we had lived in almost every corner of the globe and had traveled to every single continent. But on this day and in this place, the four of us were lost. And no amount of technology, education, or street savvy seemed to make a difference. We were hopelessly lost.

A quick detour to a gas station got us back on the right path. Directions hastily scribbled down on a napkin proved more effective than any of our technology. With only about 30 minutes off our schedule, we quickly settled into the restaurant and began catching up on each other's lives. Hours later, it was an uneventful trip back to the conference hotel and tearful goodbyes. All in all, this adventure became just a great story I share with my other friends: how four tech-savvy, GPS-equipped women got lost, but eventually found their way.

But as I stood in church today, singing praise to a God who found me and rescued me when I was lost, this story took on a much deeper meaning. God is the force who is ever present, always available, always accessible, always there with arms stretched wide open. I am the wayward child, with her toys, constantly on the go. I am constantly moving, seeking, traveling, struggling, resisting, rejecting, and disobeying. And I am the one, in my conviction and repentance, using artificial tools, and unnecessary props, and useless strategies to get back to the place, that place of peace and contentment that I have lost.

So finding myself frustrated by the lack of results of my fragile human endeavors, I abandon the hope that by myself I can ever be found, that by myself, I can ever find the right path. And it is the act of surrendering my devices and my vain attempts to find my own route, which yields a clarity of purpose and direction as to the way I should go. It is a lesson I learn again and again; I have never been so far lost that the grace of God has failed to find me.