I took a wrong turn is all. I’m known for that. How many times, I wonder, have I heard my kids from the back seat. “Mama? Are we lost again?” We laugh about it still. Because it happens still. And always, I say…..”God? You know where I am. Point the way back?” I know. Maps and GPS’s and such. The thing is, for years I’ve been this way and never used any of it to get back. He would seem to drive my car back in spite of me and I would marvel at the intersection that I found myself in, the one I should have been in in the first place. Ah life. The spiritual parallels always make me smile. I look for those.
Yesterday, all foggy and misty out, my girl and I took ourselves to the shooting range to practice our newfound “skill”. She seems to have been born with it. I can spell “g-u-n”……at this point. But I press on as I press the trigger. We headed home after, ready for jammies and movies. It had been a good day off. And that’s where we drove into new territory. I realized, as the road started looking nothing like what I anticipated, that I had not been here before. 
I used to panic at these unplanned detours. And sweat. And breathe funny. And grip the steering wheel crazy eyed. Because somehow I believed that I would never find my way back. That I might end up living off the land somewhere in a remote part of Iowa. Now? I laugh at myself. I still point my heart upwards. “God?” But now I settle into my seat and start looking around. I had a friend once who taught me to pay attention through a camera lens. I don’t have a real camera. But my friend put his camera in my hand and taught me to “see”. So now I look with different eyes, the ones in my heart and on my face. I wish I could show him what he’s taught me but he’s gone now. And so, I turn to my girl beside me; to teach her in turn. “Do you see ?” I pull off the road and tramp muddy to get closer to the picture my heart sees. I click three times. I learned that from my friend. You never know what the third click might capture that the first two missed. I look at my screen and can still hear the dripping sound of melting snow, the faint trace of the smell of tobacco laying forgotten on the barn floor, the cawing of crows circling in the sky above me. Taking pictures does that; they imprint sounds and smells and feelings in your spirit. When I go back later, I am startled at the details I missed when it was right in front of me. They are wordless journals to the journey.
They are compasses in reverse, after the fact, reminders steady of where I was and where I was going that I couldn’t see or know at the time. This trip home yesterday, off the beaten path away from what I knew? Reminds me of the proverb I’ve heard many times. All who wander are not lost. Sometimes? The Father of all that passes before, beside and behind me is gifting me with a different perspective. And teaching me how to set sail with a steady heart.
Steady Heart by Steffany Gretzinger
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