This has been a strange “season” in my life. Not that I am complaining, as there are so many around me that are suffering. I mean truly dealing with things that are life and death. Not in the dramatical kind of way, but in a true way. So to complain about feeling “lost” seems silly. Yet, here I am feeling no less lost.
I think it all started with this blessed thyroid issue. Then surgery. Then the plummet into the dark abyss of fatigue, and illness with no apparent name or treatment. Added to it the step backwards in my cowgirl world, and selling my trailer/companion, feeling jobless as my “job” as mom has changed so dramatically, and my writing…. well, just nothing to really say. Mounting on it all… Heaped on the top as if it all needed something to weigh it all down, has been the passing of friends, sitting in the hospital waiting rooms with others, holding hands with others whose marriages are disintegrating and kids’ lives are plummeting even before they actually get started.
The things that seemed to always be my saving grace, my writing, my laughter, my faith all seem to be still, unwilling to make themselves known in a way to actually pull me out…. I am not depressed. I cannot blame the grey skies, or the physical challenges. Nor is it an apparent spiritual crisis, nor is it necessarily a crisis of any kind.
When I first sat down to write about this…. I found a release in my thinking it through. I thought about all the times I found myself lost. I mean lost, as in having driven my jeep down the wrong road. Taken a right instead of a left, or gotten stuck on one of those blessed round-a-bouts and couldn’t get off… I have always believed in those moments, that one is truly never “lost.” So why would I think this is any different?
The thing that is different is that I don’t feel I have taken any wrong turn. It is more like, I set the GPS to the desired destination and on arrival discovered that there was nothing there, once I arrived.
For the first time EVER in my life, there is nowhere I really need to be. Nothing calling me to another place or another adventure or….to be more…. It is just still….. It is an odd and peculiar place for me. Not particularly passionate about anything, which is not the norm.
It is as if I arrived at the marked destination, and upon the awareness that I am lost.. decided to take off my shoes, let down my hair, find a chair and take up residence.
I feel compelled to at least begin to back up my bags and reset my GPS, but I am not certain as to where I would set it. Not sure of where I even want to be, for perhaps the first time. Ever. But as I sit here, breathing in, and breathing out, hearing the beat of my own heartbeat, listening to the organic sounds surrounding me, I am thankful for all of it. Thankful for the winding, twisted, rough, road that got me here, even if the “here” looks nothing like I thought or dreamed that it would.
I know that the time will come for me to load everything back into my jeep and hit the trail once again, set new goals and begin to dream again, and when the time comes, I know I will hit it will all abandon. but in this moment…. in this space, I am oddly okay being lost in the moment.
A Cowgirl Called 