The summer I was this freckled kid of 10, I got hopelessly lost with my parents and grandparents, my old grandfather behind the wheel of a 1982 red Chevy, circling a knot of detours and construction, exits and ramps and highways, in good ole Cincinnati, Ohio.
With her freckled legs and bare feet dangling out the rolled down window, in the backseat beside me, Grandma kept hollering, “Lloyd, I’m telling you, man! How many times are we going to circle around this dang detour like blind bats banging a brick wall before you break down and ask somebody, anybody, for directions, you hear me, man!?”
Idiocy is taking the same route again and again
and expecting to arrive somewhere better.
Her clicking tongue would tsk tsk him as she rubbed her legs with gobs of pink Rose Milk lotion from the pump bottle she kept tucked in the back pocket of the car seat for routine travel slather-sessions, the other leg stuck half out the window of the non-air-conditioned car.
“For crying out loud, Lloyd!” She slapped her lotion-slathered leg. “We’ve driven by this same sign 4 times! Why stay lost instead of asking for directions? Man alive, it’s your stubborn pride that keeps you lost more than anything else!”
The man kept driving like he didn’t hear her.
Grandpa just kept stubbornly circling construction-erupted Cincinnati kind of like a reenactment of that age-old definition of being crazy, which could be summed up as simple as this:
Idiocy is taking the same route again and again
and expecting to arrive somewhere better.
When I was no longer a kid, but still sporting a few freckles more than 3 decades later, I read of a man who says he was in the wayfinding business, designing signs, readable, decodable, accessible, to direct travellers on their way, and he says:
“While traveling, people are a bit more anxious and that affects how they act.”
While you’re trying to find your way, anxiety has a way of always finding you, and changing the way you are.
The wayfinding guy who designs signage says that the truth is:
“When people become really stressed, nothing helps them find their way except asking other people.”
“Nothing helps us find the Way like being in a community of other WayFarers on the Way.”
Nothing helps us find the Way
like being in a community of other WayFarers
on the Way.
Nothing helps us find the Way to our true destiny like true community.
It’s our connections that influence our directions. If you don’t slow down long enough to make some real connections, you’re going to keep losing the right direction.
If you really want to know the way out of any Cincinnati, you’ve got to slow down long enough to really connect with somebody. If you actually want to find a way out of all the detours, you’re going to have to detour into some community.
Because the truth is: If you step on a subway going the wrong way, you can’t turn anything around by running from car to car the right way.
“Nothing is more important in your whole life than having a way of life that keeps you in the Way Himself, who is our only Way through.“
Turns out: You can be going through the motions of the right direction, while actually moving much faster in the wrong direction.
You need to be moving in more than the right direction — you’ve got to get on the subway with a whole community of people all moving the right way.
Unless you’re moving with other people on The Way — it’s devastatingly easy for you to lose the Way.
And what I am not sure the Wayfinder guy fully realized:
Nothing helps you find your way like asking The Way Himself.
Nothing is more important in your whole life than having a way of life that keeps you in the Way Himself, who is our only Way through.
There is a proven way to learn spiritual disciplines for your life that turn the spiritual direction of your life — toward the true soul healing and wholeness you’ve been desperately dreaming of.
The saints who have gone before, taking tried and true ways, created what they called “a way of life” — and my deeply vulnerable story of WayMaker offers a very practical, accessible compass to explore six key spiritual disciplines that can turn the whole of a life around, to discover more than a way through — but to discover a whole new way of being. A whole new way of life.
There is a way to live your life, an actual “way of life,” that actually transforms your life.
“Everything in life has a way of forming us and transforming us — the only question is if it’s transforming us more into the ways of Christ.”
No direction matters more in your life than turning toward having a daily sacred way and rhythm of life — because this changes the trajectory and destination of your one life literally for forever and all eternity.
Nothing in our life isn’t forming us one way or the other, and absolutely everything in life is formational. The screens, the movies, the music, the books, the stations, the friends, the peers, the work, the culture, are all forming us whether we are conscious of it or not.
Everything in our life is actually our spiritual director — directing us spiritually closer to the Spirit of God, or directing us toward the spirit of the age.
Everything in life has a way of forming us and transforming us — the only question is if it’s transforming us more into the ways of Christ.
When my Grandfather finally navigated the way out of the detours of a Cincinnati in the midst of summer construction, it was only because he finally pulled over and asked an elderly lady walking her miniature poodle.
And she blossomed into this wrinkled smile and turned and pointed — and then asked for a pen to write it down in words.
Because that is always the best wayfinding:
Good directions always come from a good community of people — who always turn us toward the direction of the good Word Himself.
When Grandpa finally wound his way right out of Cincinatti, us kids all cheered, and Grandma’s bare Rose-milked, freckled legs dangled half out the window like a beckoning wave.
You are going to make it.
Because you, right now, are in the hands of the WayMaker.
Friend, will you come?
Nothing is more important in your whole life than having a way of life that keeps you in the Way Himself, who is our only Way through. And beginning June 13, as a community, led by our friends at Faith Gateway, we’ll unpack this SACRED way of life together, six spiritual disciplines, a daily habit spelled in just six letters, which is the soul’s very real and directing compass to keeping company with the Way Himself.
Can I invite you to join a whole community of Wayfarers on the Way, for The WayMaker Online Bible Study through our friends at FaithGateway?
No direction matters more in your life than turning toward having a daily sacred way and rhythm of life — because this changes the trajectory and destination of your one life literally for forever and all eternity.
This free six-week journey will help us all together develop a S.A.C.R.E.D daily habit, a rule of life, that will reorient our souls in relation to God through Scripture, prayer and study.
Being with you, walking on the Way, all of us together in community, is a humbling joy that lays me low with gratitude.
Will I get to see you there too, June 13?
Signing up for the Online Bible Study is FREE!
your sign up includes:
- FREE access to the exclusive Facebook Group – a whole community, led by our friends at Faith Gateway, to walk through the SACRED Way together June 13 – July 30
- FREE access to all 6 Bible Study Sessions with Ann
- FREE PDF download of Session One from the Study Guide
- FREE Wayfarer’s Compass printable: a daily guide to the SACRED Way of life
- FREE lettered quotes to print
(you will also be given the opportunity to pick up a copy of the WayMaker Study Guide as a companion to the study to help you dig even deeper, but no purchase is necessary in order to join the Online Bible Study and enjoy the free gifts listed above.)
