This is the second post in a series. You can jump into the conversation here. Or start with Part 1.
As a college student, I did some serious wrestling with my faith. I think it was what people these days call “deconstructing.” It was serious business, taking my faith apart, layer by layer, piece by piece, and rebuilding it. In the end, the effort took several years. But what came out of all that work has proven truly sustainable for me.
Going through the process, I found that the faith of my childhood, as good as it was, wasn’t equipped to handle adult questions – or the PTSD left over from when I was a kid. I never fully abandoned my childhood faith, but I did learn how to grow it to take on adulting challenges, a huge task for something that worked when you were 6 or even 13. Kind of like outgrowing your clothes as you grow up – you don’t stop wearing clothes, you just adjust your wardrobe.
One of the ways I adjusted was to accept that I didn’t have answers to every question that came up. And I didn’t necessarily have to have all the answers. Just because I didn’t have answers didn’t mean that what I believed was wrong. One of the things we learn from gaining knowledge is that the more we come to know, the more we realize we don’t know. So, realizing you don’t know everything is a sign you are learning.
In college, I was having a hard time reconciling what some of my professors were teaching with what I had been raised to believe was true. One professor more than all the rest helped me find my bearings through that turbulent time. Hal Waters was my journalism teacher and an outstanding one at that.
A charismatic Episcopalian, Mr. Waters was someone who showed me how to hold on to my core beliefs as I encountered adult challenges. I never actually asked him my questions about faith; I just observed how he lived out his faith so genuinely and so vibrantly in the midst of a skeptical world. Full of confidence. Full of joy.
And by living his faith in front of me in that crazy world, he helped me get a handle on my own faith. If he could do it, so could I.
As I wrote in Part 1 of “How to stay on track till you die,” when I find myself in times of uncertainty, all I have to do is pause and get my bearings. I’ve been through very confusing times in my life, but these bearings – these things that make sense of life for me – have sustained me through thick and thin, including some very nightmarish seasons.
What do I mean when I say, “get my bearings”? To revisit the “confusion in the woods” metaphor (see Part 1), they give me guidance and direction.
When I talk about getting my bearings in life, I mean finding direction, my focus, things that keep me channeled. I don’t start each day as if I have no idea where I am headed. I know today is a workday or a day for going to church. Or just for vegging. Even when vegging there are certain actions to take – like eating something, reading or checking my phone for messages, or doing something even more active, like puttering around the house or shop.
Besides being a waste of time, having to come up with an idea of what to make of my life each day would be exhausting. Just as these priorities keep me on track with daily concerns, they also help me when I hit a crossroad, a crisis, a different stage in life. At such a moment, I pause and ask myself, Which direction lines up with the rest of my life’s focus?
I do not like high heights. Planes, I don’t mind. But put me on the edge of a cliff? Everything goes wobbly. I lose my sense of balance.
Ever been on a boat out in choppy waters? You get off the boat at the dock. What do you have to do? Stop a minute and get your balance. You have to get your sense that the things that keep you lined up are all in place. Head and shoulders, knees and toes stuff.
As I worked through that season of faith challenge in my youth, I took a fresh look at the faith of my childhood, determined it still had usefulness, and analyzed what about it was core, essential. In that core, I found my balance – and began to build my priorities for life.
Since then, at each new crossroad or crisis, I haven’t floundered as if I had nothing to stand on. I don’t have to deconstruct all over again as much as I just need to process how the new challenge interfaces with what I have already found to be true, to be essential. In each new situation, at each fresh crisis, I reevaluate my focus to see how it helps me face the new setting in which I find myself.
I’ve realized, over time, that my core values have remained basically the same as when I was a kid, just rephrased and enriched by fresh understandings of my faith and how that faith intersects with the changing world around me.
Priorities or life’s essentials aren’t things you just think about on New Year’s Day or some crisis moment in life. They are things you use every day. I’ve learned to keep my life’s essentials ever in focus.
And I keep this priority list short.
Now, I believe there is much in the world that is helpful for keeping us running well. All kinds of books and role models, stories and teachings, family and friends, nutrition plans and exercise routines, sayings and mantras, experts and teachers, and that elderly neighbor down the street. A lot can contribute to making the good life truly good.
For example, as a believer in Jesus, I’ve come to trust that God has provided the Bible to give me a solid foundation on which to build my life. I guess that makes the Bible a priority for me. But, to be honest, the Bible – essential as it is – isn’t even listed on my priority sheet. I just know it’s incorporated in what is listed.
My “list” is very simple and makes a lot of assumptions about what guides me in life, like the Bible. While this list covers lots of territory, it’s not a “to do” list, but a guide, a handful of points that keep me focused.
My list has just 4 points. That’s simple enough for easy recall.
For years I’ve kept “To Do” lists. As I get older, I find them ever more helpful. I have to make a list if I am going to the store and I have more than one item to get. Well actually, it helps if I write down that one item these days – or take a photo on my phone of what I need to replace. What I don’t record somehow doesn’t exist.
So at least weekly, I print out a “To Do” list and update it with a red pen as things come up. It has everything I need to get done for that week, every event that is coming up, every task that has to be completed.
At the top of this sheet is something that never changes – “4 Guides till I die”. They’re also in the notes app on my phone. And they’re engraved in my memory, weak as it is.
Here are my “4 Guides till I die”:
- Love God with my whole being.
- Love my neighbor as myself.
- Declare and demonstrate God’s good news.
- Live the 10k-year view.
These 4 guides could use some explaining, especially that last one. So, in future installments of this series, I’ll elaborate. You can decide how they might work for you. Or come up with your own wording.
You might be asking yourself, How do these guides help me with the practical things in life?
Where does my job fit in?
How do they help me know whether to buy a house and in which community?
What about how I vote or spend my money?
What causes should I support? What needs should I respond to?
Or who I marry or how I treat my kids?
Well, for me, it’s all in there.
Guides – or priorities – don’t have to be specific markers saying, Take this particular road or turn right at that tree. They just help us keep aiming toward the end goal we already have in mind.
Back to Hal Waters. What he taught me in those three years at college was that though he didn’t have all the answers, he had enough to get started with and to keep heading in the right direction with. And they kept him going for the rest of his life.
As I said, he was my journalism teacher. He taught me how to craft a story or news report one step at a time, how to grab reader interest, how to make it all flow, how to verify the facts and go only with what you could verify.
Once I took a creative writing class from him. Creative writing is different from journalism. There are not necessarily facts to verify, unless you are using real life contexts. But you still have to do your homework. You have to make sure all the pieces hang together – or your story won’t hold up. The reader won’t buy it.
Now when it comes to living your life, the pieces are all there. And there for a reason. Like the facts in a news report or the details of a creative writing assignment. Your life is designed to fit together and function.
Guides or priorities help you put it all together – and keep it together, flowing smoothly. They do more than just get you up in the morning. They help you put one foot in front of the other until you can look back and see that the path you’ve taken makes good sense. And you can look forward and see where it is taking you next – and that your destination is a very good place no matter what happens to you along the way.
More in a few weeks. Sign up here so you don’t miss Part 3. Look here for Part 1 if you haven’t read it yet. It’s all part of the journey!
Public domain photo by Dietmar Rabich
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