Chaos & Clarity

Husband says I can get lost in my own backyard. He exaggerates. The fact that I couldn’t find my way home from Peach’s dance class when we first moved to the country and had to call him to send up a flare, is not ample evidence. To a city girl, everything looks the same in the woods.

Fortunately, I’m not afraid to ask for directions. Like the time at the hardware store when the kindly gentleman employee, noticing my bewilderment, asked if he could help me. “Yes,” I gratefully replied. “I’m looking for caulk.”  The stunned, red-faced man led me silently to aisle 5.

Life is a maze – one in which I am frequently befuddled. And scared. Sometimes it seems that there is no difference between the middle-aged me and the eight year old me who cried her way through an amusement park after getting stuck in the glass maze. Or the teenage me on the first day of Sophomore year in a new school who burst into tears from the stress of being the new kid in a paralyzing scene of adolescent frenzy.

Perhaps this explains why a girl who failed Geography is addicted to maps and has a pet name for her GPS. And why my favorite job in college was Orientation Guide – leading packs of overwhelmed families through the labyrinth of an urban University Campus. Guiding is the antithesis of being lost.

When I see a panicked child in a store or a dog wandering the streets, I cannot rest until it is reunited with its family. Helping the lost is akin to reaching out the hand that knows what it’s like to tremble with fear and grasping another to steady it.

One day, I found a boy at the beach who was clearly too young to be alone. I detained the happy little chap until his mother arrived on the scene, frantic. Scooping him up, she admonished him for wandering off. His precious rebuttal to her fear was, “I not lost, Momma. I right here.” Clever lad. He knew that wherever he went, there he was. Why waste time worrying about where you’re supposed to be when the place you’re at is so magnificent?

I’m sure it’s magical for some people, like Husband, to explore the unknown and find his own way. Say, for example, in Disney World. But for those of us in need of a plan, there are at least three books that one might read on how to negotiate this particular adventure with efficiency. If these two very different people attempt to vacation together, they might argue a lot and vow never to vacation together again. Not that this happened to me. Just sayin’.

In the Adventure Park of Life, if given the choice, I opt for the guided tour. And I know I’m not alone. When I Google ‘How to deal with anger,’ I don’t even have to finish typing the sentence before several of the most frequently requested answers pop up. People want to KNOW. They don’t want to struggle.

That being said, I’ve learned to appreciate uncertainty and to find the humor in feeling lost.   Because the truth is, I’ve never not been found. When I was lost in sorrow, love found me. When I was lost in chaos, clarity found me.

Life, it turns out, is not the terrifying place I imagined. Writing about it reminds me of this. When I find myself confused about life’s challenges, writing sheds light on the internal compass, which is a heck of a lot more interesting to follow than a real compass. It takes me to places I never knew existed. And then, of course, I want to lead others to these places. So I share my thoughts with you and hope that the little match I’ve lit will light your way too.

Henry David Thoreau said, “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” He is smarter than Husband who tells me, “You’re hopeless without a map.” But Husband is cuter and has a tremendous sense of direction. When we married, my first choice for our wedding song was Follow Me Follow You by Genesis. Husband said it was too hard to dance to. But I think the real issue was his disagreement with the ‘I will follow you’ part. He was understandably nervous, given my track record.

My lost-ness is a well-honed skill. I rather excel at it. It’s not much to brag about, but I’m sort of attached to it.

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!