Lost

Lost.

(Five minute Friday- where we write like we used to run- for the joy of it. No editing.  Inspired by Lisajobaker)


I'm getting my bearings again, and it's not just summer's lack of routine that has me unsettled.   It's the reorganizing of my brain that happens in the midst of it, the questioning of who I am and what am I really supposed to be doing here?

Sitting under a child I am where I should be, unless I should be sitting next to that other child, or the neighbor, or doing the laundry, or finishing that 4h project, or writing, or studying, or making them turn off the TV and get outside for heavens' sake!

My speed is too slow for me- one thing at a time is not enough when there are so many things. And even while I do the things I feel the need to pull away from the things so I can assess the things and try to figure out which ones I should even be doing! But when can I find the time for that, when the cat has fleas and I can't even find her, and now I have ten extra loads of laundry?

I'd like to hide in a novel, and sometimes I do.  I emerge from that story as if it were a vacation, but always I return to the chaos and the feeling of being lost in the middle of it.

I try to write something but my brain is so scattered I have no idea where to begin.  Just a feeling of flailing.

But my fingers itch to write something, anything, despite the muddled brain.
Perhaps some words poured on the keyboard will help untangle and un-muddle. I stare at the blank page and find I need a writing prompt- and the word from Lisa Jo this week is perfect: Lost.

How does the gospel affect my to-do list? I've asked this question before, and tried to answer, but it's in the living out of the answer where everything gets tangled.

I've written longer than five minutes now, but I am writing now for the joy of it, for the clarity of it, and I cannot stop until I get somewhere a little more solid.

I miss my days as a student, when my to-do list was made for me by professors.  It was challenging, but it was clear, and doable. Now I feel like I stand in a field with no markers, in this broad expanse where I am a mother and a wife and a friend and I could go any and every way in those vocations. And I don't know where to start.

I am loved fully by God in Christ. There is no need to figure this out to earn his favor or secure my future, for my future is secure in His love. I live in freedom, and I am free to love as the wind blows.

Freedom - exhilarating and terrifying. What do I do first?  I sit in the middle of the field with my coffee and my Bible and my possibilities all spread out in the grass around me. What next, Lord?

I do not have the luxury of waiting in silence for an answer.  Here comes the child with sticky fingers, tromping through my piles, begging for a glass of milk.

I'll get him the milk, but what then, what next?  God does not answer from the sky.

Of course, he is not merely a God in the sky, but a God with me in the kitchen and in the vast expanse of my unclear vocation. He's not lost, and He knows just where I am.

I suppose, if one must feel lost, this is the place to be:

Feeling lost in the little things, but in all things that matter, found.