My Kingdom for a Compass

The season I have been sitting in for over a year now has a theme word..."navigating."  I noticed just now that "navigate" or "navigation" would not fit exactly right, because the present progressive tense indicates perfectly how I am constantly and necessarily on alert to avoid running into some large obstacles.  My life is like a sailing journey, and like that Italian cruise ship captain who became infamous a few weeks ago, I often fail to consult the most basic maps that could help me steer.

My pride gets in the way.  "I've been through something like this a thousand times!  I know how to do it!  I don't need any help!"

The truth is, God knows what He is doing in my life way better than I do.  He keeps leading me through these obstacle courses that might seem boringly similar, but in fact my life keeps spiraling upward and outward and downward into a greater maturity and understanding of who I am and what my purpose is in Christ.  For example, living in a dorm room at a Christian college for 4 years was a great experience in Christian community.  One might assume that living in a men's discipleship house with 7 other guys would be boringly similar.  Ha.  How wrong that assumption is.  It has shown me how inexperienced I am, where my greatest weaknesses are, and where even my strengths need encouragement and wisdom and boldness to be exercised correctly.  Most of all, it has shown me that the unhealthy relational and emotional patterns that were ingrained in me growing up (either because of who my parents were or the choices I made in the past) will be endlessly repeated and rehashed in my new relationships, until God brings some measure of healing and restoration to my heart.   The hurts and wounds in me that I am constantly trying to cope with, medicate or ignore are still there.  They aren't just going to go away.  In fact, they might just keep growing and creating bigger and bigger problems between me and the people around me unless I turn, address them directly, and ask repeatedly for God to fix them.  It's humbling.  Which is, I think, exactly what God wants.

So I noticed that navigating real life doesn't become easier.  If I am doing well, it increasingly becomes a reminder of how I must rely on the Holy Spirit to guide and empower me.It becomes a reminder of how I must come to God in humility, seeking His path through unfamiliar terrain.  If I am doing poorly, it becomes a stinging redirection as my own intelligence and my own strength fails me again and again when I try to pridefully conquer every obstacle.