When I sit on with a woman who bleeds weeks through the aching miscarriage of her desperately-yearned-for babe, my heart breaks.

I weep mid-week with a woman clawing at the face of cancer who keeps relentlessly hunting down her only family.

And before the week ends, a haunted woman looks me steady in the eye and whispers that all of her life proves that God clearly hates her, so she is relieved to just walk away and stop trying to get Love Himself to love her.

When life throws you a curve, the only way through, is to curve your arms around God.

I drop my head and cry hard after she says her goodbye.

I hear the cracking of so many hearts: How do you walk on when you want to walk away from the parts of your life that scorch your heart? When the road goes south, how do you stay oriented to true north?

I keep searching faces, reading eyes, and my heart aches with all that I know:

When life throws you a curve, the only way through is to curve your arms around God.

I cross paths with a man who is in the wayfinding business, designing signs, readable, decodable, accessible signs, to direct travellers on their way. I keep returning to what he says, “While travelling, people are a bit more anxious — and that effects how they act.”

Who of us isn’t travelling from somewhere hard, looking for the way to somewhere better? Who of us then isn’t a bit anxious? Who of us then doesn’t feel how all of that effects everything?

Anxiety can shape our trajectory.

I cry with women, and my heart cries:

All of life is a journey down an unknown road, and how do you live into your road bending and curving like a hard question mark?

You may not know where you are, but you never have to fear losing your hope, fear losing your way, fear losing your soul.

You may not know where you are, but you never have to fear losing your hope, fear losing your way, fear losing your soul.

The wayfinding guy who designs signage, he says that the truth is:

“When people become really stressed, nothing helps them find their way except asking other people.”

Nothing helps you find your way — like leaning in with other brave souls on the Way.

There are people who are cartographers, people who make maps — and there are people who are heartographers, those who map the ways of the heart.

Cartography is the study of maps — and heartography is the study of the ways of the heart.

Heartography is about the ways the heart turns, and how it orients — or doesn’t — to Love Himself, especially in the dark.

The key questions that Love Himself asks us, as we keep questing for a way through our only life, are questions we have to intentionally pause and ask our own soul: Who do you say that I am? (Mt. 16:15) Where are you going from? Where are you going to? (Gen. 16:8) What do you want? (Mark 10:51)

I ache and break, and it’s only when we take the time to write down and name where we are actually at, can anything actually begin to turn around.

This is not some trite cliche — this is what you have to actually do, if you want to see the way through.

God is on a quest too: He is making everything into a way to be with us. The places we want out of — might be the exact places where God can most intimately get to us, to intimately be with us.

Nothing helps us see the way through — like asking the Way Himself —and then answering the questions of the the Way Himself. Because God is on a quest too: He is making everything into a way to be with us. Emmanuel, meaning “God with us,” says He is also “the Way”: God is always making everything into a way to be with us.

The places we want out of — might be the exact places where God can most intimately get to us, to intimately be with us.

The most tender places, can be where we press most tenderly into God. Is there somewhere else we need to be more?

If you don’t want to get lost, maybe you don’t need a sign as much as you need a real dialogue with the Word and WayMaker Himself.

Though you may be in unknown territory, you always have an open door to talk to the One who knows the whole Story.

Because the way you live into question marks is to live in the nail-marked One who is the Answer.

Do I tell the WayFinder guy:

WayFinding isn’t about finding the path — but about you being found by the Person who is the only Way.

Real Heartography charts not only the where of our own heart — but also charts the real ways of God’s heart.

And: There is only one word that accurately maps the heart of God: hesed.

The way of Jesus isn’t about finally arriving somewhere —it’s about deep attachment to Someone.

The way of Jesus isn’t about finally getting to impressive accomplishments — it’s about ultimately having intimate attachment.

The way we’re looking for — is where we know God is for us, that He is looking for us, that His eye never leaves us, because His love never does.

Where we lose everything else, can be exactly where God’s love means more than anything else.

Where we lose everything else, can be exactly where God’s love means more than anything else.

It’s my spiritual director, who makes herself into this waymarker, a marker directing everything and everyone to the real presence of the Triune God, who quietly asks me to sit with His very word, His very heart.

“The Lord, the Lord,
is a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast hesed- ove and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast hesed-love for the thousandth generation…”
(Exodus 34:6-7)

Whatever you see on the horizon, still see the hesed-lovingkindness of God.

Can I believe that though cancer stalks and babies die and hearts crack and grieve, there is only one lens to see the way through the real Kingdom of God?

And I whisper it aloud to her:

Hesed is the only real lens.

Whatever you see on the horizon, still see the dawning hesed-lovingkindness of God.

Whatever you see coming your way, see God coming with ways to turn it into His hesed-lovingkindness.

The real Heartography of God’s heart has to chart out His real Hesed-lovingkindness. Any real heartography of God has to map how God literally gave us His own heart to mend our broken ones. The kind of heart God has, is nothing less than a kind heart.

The reality of this world is: Without the lens of His Hesed, all maps lose meaning — and souls lose their way. Without the lens of hesed, the world loses love.

“He is my steadfast hesed-love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge…” (Ps. 144:2).

The lens of Hesed is the only lens that lets us see the way to go. When we have eyes to still see the ways of His lovingkindness, we have eyes to see still the Way. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

The only place we have to go is always toward the open arms of God. Everything else is vaporous mirage.

The only place we have to go is always toward the open arms of God. Everything else is vaporous mirage.

When I weep through the week, with all these breaking hearts, I feel it with these brave hearts, in my own very real grief, how withness breaks brokenness, and cataracts can wash away, and there is a way that lets nothing break our lens of hesed.

And this too is real, the way we trace the heartography of God, the way, even now, we believe everything in the world is being made somehow into a sign of the hesed-lovingkindness of God.

The topography of our days only makes sense when we trace the heartography of His very real hesed-lovingkindness and grace.