As Art Hannah used to say, “We’re not lost. We’re just confused.”
Born in the Appalachians, Art was the father of my teenage buddy and a leader in our church. His homespun wisdom came out quietly, catching us off-guard, a twinkle in his eye.
We’d be walking through the woods, following a sandy trail, or bushwacking our way through the tangle, exploring the edges of South Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Maybe the sun was hiding behind thick clouds, everything appearing the same no matter which direction you looked. Pines, scrub oaks, and dense undergrowth spread out on a terrain flat as a pancake.
With Art the adult in the group, we teenage boys looked to him to help us. One side of his face would be pushed up toward his eye, his teeth chewing on a straw he’d clipped along the way. You knew he was searching for his bearings.
Growing up in the rugged hills of the far southwest corner of North Carolina, he’d honed those bearings. Enough to live to get confused another day.
With Art, we might have been confused more than a few times. But we never got lost, never fully lost like we couldn’t find our way back to base. We knew if we didn’t pause and find those bearings to guide us, we’d wind up just walking in circles and never get out. And so, with Art, we’d pause and get our bearings.
Art taught us we always had a way out. He knew that lostness was self-defeating. Feeling lost led to panic, and panic led to … well, you just didn’t want to go there.
As a young man, Art had been there. He’d found himself mired in the fog brought on by too much alcohol. He wasn’t just confused, he was truly lost on a path of self-destruction. Then, as he later testified, Jesus found him, delivered him from the addiction, and set him on the straight and narrow. Never again was he lost.
Still, there were times – whether in the woods or at some fork in the road of life – when he had to stop and find those bearings because he could not tell which way was forward. Even when we are walking with Jesus, he’d say, we can get confused – us, not Jesus, that is. We just have to stop and figure out which way he is leading.
There have been times in my life when I could not tell which way was forward. I’ve remembered those words of Art’s about being confused, not lost. And I’ve looked for those bearings, those trusty guides to help me find my way. To keep me from going in circles. To calm my spirit and avoid the self-destructive panic.
Once I found myself in such a fog – a literal cloud bank at night on a curvy road in those same rugged mountains of Art’s beloved North Carolina. I was a student, hitching a ride with classmate Harriett Matthews to a snow ski resort with our waterski team from college. Harriet, from Gastonia, had been on this road before.
She was a great water skier, cool as a cucumber as she accelerated over those ski jump ramps or zipped through the slalom course. Right then we needed that coolness. But with the dense fog and dark, she was moving past coolness toward panic.
At first, she did the driving while I was helping her from the passenger seat know how close we were getting to the edge around those curves, an edge that was straight down the mountain. She was puffing one cigarette after another to calm her nerves, and we had the windows down in that biting cold so we could clear the air inside the car. Outside was no better, the fog so thick we could barely see beyond the headlights.
Finally, she asked me to take the wheel, and she became the guide watching the edge of the road out the passenger window. But all she kept yelling was, “Slower! Slower!” as we inched up the side of the mountain. We found our way eventually, the muscles in my hands exhausted, the skin knuckle-white. I don’t remember how. I only remember that we made it to the ski resort for what turned out to be a disappointing amount of patchy snow. The adventure was truly in the journey that time.
There was another time I became very confused. Only I didn’t feel I had a handle on the steering wheel at all as my life was going over the edge. The clouds were so dense, so low to the ground, I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. This fog wasn’t made of tiny water droplets suspended in the air. This fog was all in my head.
I found myself descending into a deep and vast pit, a monumental sea of depression brought on by childhood trauma. It was as if my hiking boots had lost their grip on a gravel path, and I was sliding out of control down the side of that pit. I could find nothing to hang onto, nothing to stop my slide.
Only I was no longer a youth; I was in my 50s, a husband and father of four teenagers, responsible for their wellbeing even as I wasn’t sure how to keep mine. The only thing I could hang on to was that I owed it to my wife and kids to keep going.
We left our work and home of many years in China and landed in Portland, Oregon, a place where we’d never lived and knew no one. In those days, Portland was a magnet for folks looking for the good life. When people said, “What brought you here?” I’d reply, “My therapist.”
Then as we struggled to get our bearings in our new setting, the Great Recession of ’08 hit. Out of work for far too long and trying to overcome the depression, I went into the pharmacy one day to get my medication. Without work, we didn’t have health insurance, so it was cash out of pocket. I said to the pharmacist, “The price of this depression medication is depressing me.”
I had a twinkle in my eye when I said that. I had already started to get my bearings and was finding my way forward. My wife, my therapist, and a support group were all there to help me. I journaled, prayed, fed my soul on Bible passages long familiar, and discovered other helpful writers.
It wasn’t easy climbing my way out of that pit. After a couple of years, I found work running a food pantry – the pay was parttime if the hours were not. But still I wondered, what did any of this chapter in my life have to do with the sense of calling I’d had for so long? Even when I was younger and sorting out that calling, I’d had a clear sense of priorities.
But what did those priorities have to do with where I was now? What use were they in finding my way out of this dense wilderness?
I went back to revisit those priorities. I discovered they hadn’t changed. While I did update the wording, I discovered they were still the bearings I so desperately needed in my time of confusion. As I reflected on them, I realized they were useful as ever, as foundational to my present setting as any season of life I had experienced before.
After more than a dozen years leading nonprofit work in Portland, I’ve found myself transitioning again. Transitions in life are inevitable. Whether we want to or not, we age and with aging comes transition. So I’ve entered yet another chapter, this one marked by a different rhythm of labor.
The kids are grown and flown the coop. I look at Kim and see the bride of my youth, knowing full well I am no longer the youth that married her. Meanwhile peers are aging and dying all around me. I may have another 30 years. I may have but one. I have no idea.
But what I do know is that when I find myself in a moment of confusion, all I have to do is pause and look for my bearings. I sense these bearings will continue to serve me well – well until the day I die.
I sense they might serve you well, too. Through a series of posts scattered over the next few weeks, I’d like to explore them with you. You’re welcome to reflect with me along the way, welcome to share in the comment section or on Facebook or, if you prefer, message me privately here. And you are welcome to see how they fit on you. I trust you’ll find them useful, as I have.
These bearings are my anchors, my guides, my guardrails. For simplicity I have just 4. Simple enough to remember. Broad enough to cover all the bases. Guaranteed to keep me from getting lost.
Well before I knew Art, he’d found his bearings in life. After bringing misery on himself and those he loved, he never lost his bearings again. Until the day he died, those bearings kept him headed in the right direction.
Now that I’ve found my bearings again through all these transitions, I invite you to explore with me how they can enhance your life as well.
To make certain you are able to follow this series, be sure to subscribe here – as always for free!
Public domain photo by Dietmar Rabich