Getting Lost...

"Feeling lost within outward success..." (83).  Eric Elnes says those words in "Gifts of the Dark Wood."  Have you ever felt like everything is going great, and yet you feel lost?  Or everything is not going great and you feel lost.

Elnes says the regular experience of getting lost is one of the most important gifts we can receive.  He says the feeling of being lost prompts us to pay more careful attention to the signals that the Holy Spirit sends us.  We pray and meditate longer when we feel lost and with greater attention.  We pay more attention to our gut intuitions and bodily responses when we feel lost.  We seek out friends, family and mentors when we feel lost (84-85).

So often it our lives we try to go it alone.  We try to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, but we can't do it.

Be still.
Listen.
Pay attention.

God is with us and God can help us find our way out of the dark, one step at a time.  Elnes shares the words of writer E. L. Doctorow who said, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Thanks be to God.