Lost

by

Perspectives

Lost Things

I lost my wallet.  It has been gone four days now, and I am starting to get antsy.  There is no money in it and my debit card has no use for potential thieves (my account is overdrawn already - joke’s on them!).  But the wallet does contain my student ID, which I need in order to enter the library and finish the homework that was due last week.  My driver’s license would be helpful too, so I can talk my friends into buying me margaritas next time we go to that hip Mexican joint.  Mostly, though, I just don’t like the feeling that I have lost something and can’t find it.

The wallet is a metaphor.  Don’t misunderstand me – my wallet is definitely lost.  But more feels lost in my life right now.  I seem to be losing any certainty, in fact, that I know how to do life.  I have lost my grip on the answers to the big questions, like vocational discernment, love, commitment, and purpose.

Oh, I have found my calling to ordained ministry in the local church, and I have discovered that love is a choice and an action, and I have seen how loving God and neighbor is ultimately why I’m here.  But that’s like someone telling me my wallet is in the state of Tennessee – it doesn’t get me any closer to my driver’s license, it doesn’t fix my broken relationships, and it doesn’t tell me how to fulfill my calling today.

Yes, I am lost, and I seem unable to find myself. That is hard to admit.  I come from the breed of people who believes perfection is not only attainable but expected.  More importantly, I want everyone else to think I am perfect.  “Success” is the word that haunts my daydreams.  In high school and college, that meant getting the highest grades and joining the most student organizations; after college, success was doing the most exciting gap year and writing the wittiest blogs; in divinity school and church, success means preaching the most profound sermons, writing the most provocative papers, and offering the most eloquent prayers.

And here is the real kicker:  I think I can actually do all of those things, and do them on my own!  In my abysmal lack of humility, I believe that by sheer force of will, I can somehow achieve this fantastical vision of perfection that I hold.  If I look in every nook and cranny, if I retrace every step, surely I can find the wallet.  If I keep pushing, surely I can find perfection.  I don’t need to ask for help, I just need to try harder.  Look harder, and I will find it.  Try harder, and I will have it all together. But I lost my wallet.  And I lost the relationship that I thought would end in marriage.  And I am struggling to find the clarity of call that brought me to divinity school in the first place.  I am lost, and it has become quite obvious that I cannot do life very well on my own.

Powerless

The spirituality of the Twelve Steps begins with the message of powerlessness:  “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable,” declares the first step for addicts seeking recovery.  As Richard Rohr points out, though, “if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality.”  The Way worship service at St. John’s UMC in Memphis puts it this way:  “We’re all in recovery.  We’ve all got a God-sized hole in our hearts.”

The brilliance of the Twelve Steps is that only by experiencing our powerlessness can we begin the journey to healing.  Only by finding the hole can we become whole. And that, my friends, is what they call a paradox.  Kind of like that other paradox we read about in the Bible – the one where Jesus goes to the cross on the path to resurrection.  It is the central paradox that holds the disparate logic of the entire Jesus message together:  only in the downward motion of loss and death do we find hope and new life.  “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it” (Lk 17.33, Mt. 10.39, Mt. 16.25, Mk 8.35, John 12.25).

So as I face my own powerlessness – to find my wallet and to find my self – I am going to try to accept that I cannot do it alone.  I am going to give up a little more control and trust God and others a little more.  I will turn to mentors and “holy friendships” for guidance when my own head is too muddled to offer direction.  I will pray John Wesley’s covenant prayer and try to actually mean it when I say the words, “I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.”  I will admit that I am powerless.

What about you?  I can only speak for myself, but does any of this resonate with your own experience?   To what are you holding on that you need to let go?  What are you afraid to admit for fear of what other people might think?  What don’t you have the power to fix?   If you are as reckless as me, feel free to share your responses below with the entire world.  A safer setting might be with trusted friends, in your time of prayer, or with a counselor.  Either way, as you reflect on the questions, I invite you to join me in the first few lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous “Serenity Prayer”:

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change, 

courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

By the way, if anyone finds my wallet, can you let me know?

Gabe Horton is a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a pastoral intern at Belle Meade United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN. This post is reprinted with permission from UMC Lead.