Lauren and I were spending the day in Portland, combining business with pleasure as we're so talented at doing.
To hit only the highlights, you would think it was a charming, uneventful day: drop siblings off where they are reenacting, visit Schuback's Violin Shop, wile away two hours at Powell's bookstore (with Stumptown coffee in hand), pick up a few groceries at Trader Joe's, have a late lunch at The Old Spaghetti Factory, and then pick up siblings and head home.
Except we got lost. Horribly lost. Multiple times.
When I got my license, GPS was not a commonplace car accessory, so I learned to manage with MapQuest (I have a horrible sense of direction). But in recent years, I've been spoiled with a talking device that tells me when and where to turn and even recalculates like magic when I take a wrong turn. This time, however, Mama was using Mabel (our GPS), and bereft of our gadget and even a simple street map, Lauren and I did the best we could with our printed MapQuest directions (neither of us are quick to jump on trends, so we also didn't have the aid of a smartphone). Did you know that MapQuest doesn't recalculate? Or tell you what you did wrong? Or help you detour around construction? Our day ended up looking like this:
- Drop siblings off.
- Take a wrong turn, but get back on track within five minutes, and arrive at Schuback's.
- Spend 30 minutes driving the 3 minute trip to Powell's (no, there was no construction or traffic).
- Uneventful drive to Trader Joe's--hooray!
- Spend 60 minutes driving the 9 minute trip to Spaghetti Factory (there was construction, but that only added five minutes to our trip), including getting on the wrong freeway, ending up in the wrong part of town, making a lucky guess to get back in the right part of town, driving back to Powell's (where we KNEW where we were) three times, and discovering that Portland's streets are in alphabetical order in NW Portland.
- Take a wrong turn, but get back on track within five minutes and pick siblings up.
- Uneventful drive home--hooray!
Remarkably, Lauren and I did more laughing than crying, and we weren't horribly late to anything. Even with the ludicrous amount of time spent off the beaten path, we still had a delightful day.
I couldn't help but think of all the times when I feel just as lost in life as I did that day in Portland. When every moment seems fraught with stressful decisions; the road ahead is foggy and imperceptible; the directions seem unclear; and even my fellow sojourners don't know the way. But if life is a journey, it is certainly not a trip through a maze of big-city streets, where the destination is solely dependent upon my navigational skills!
Life is much more like a voyage: I and every other Christian are traveling in an immense ocean liner, steaming to the edge of the world. Our passage was purchased by the blood of Christ, and our destination is heaven. Certainly, the web of hallways and decks and rooms are daunting, and we often falter, finding ourselves separated from our fellow Christians and seemingly from the Captain Himself. But we have only to go back to what we know to be true (hint: prayer and Scripture!), before all is right again and we are walking in Truth and Light. Yet all the while--even when our heart races and our stomach fills with the familiar dread of being in unknown territory--the Captain has never abandoned us. We neither leave the ship, nor are we truly lost. Even in the moments when we find ourselves in a dark pit in the deepest bowels of the vessel, we are still cruising at maximum speed for heaven.
Life is much more like a voyage: I and every other Christian are traveling in an immense ocean liner, steaming to the edge of the world. Our passage was purchased by the blood of Christ, and our destination is heaven. Certainly, the web of hallways and decks and rooms are daunting, and we often falter, finding ourselves separated from our fellow Christians and seemingly from the Captain Himself. But we have only to go back to what we know to be true (hint: prayer and Scripture!), before all is right again and we are walking in Truth and Light. Yet all the while--even when our heart races and our stomach fills with the familiar dread of being in unknown territory--the Captain has never abandoned us. We neither leave the ship, nor are we truly lost. Even in the moments when we find ourselves in a dark pit in the deepest bowels of the vessel, we are still cruising at maximum speed for heaven.
I love the analogy of the ocean liner for our trip to heaven! And I am so glad you survived your day, were able to laugh about it, and lived to tell about it. :)
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