lovingly lead us step by step navigating us through a complete GPS repositioning, and there aren’t any shortcuts.
No shortcuts to driving a hundred miles, to baking a cake, to getting enough sleep. And there certainly aren’t any to living life well. But I wonder, when navigating our day or even a long-term plan, how often we’re living life as though we’d simply opened our map app that will tell us to take the next exit or how many miles are ahead of us.
Our inner guidance system is lovingly and gently revealing details that will make the changes we need one small step at a time as we let go of our perfectly laid down plans and expectations. It’s almost as though we’ve built our own life app when the truth is GPS technology isn’t so new at all. From the beginning of time, we were created with an inner guidance system more powerful than any technology there will ever be.
A friend and I recently took a day trip just to do something different and have some fun. We checked out some places to go and decided one thing we would do was check out a couple of the many wineries in our state. We didn’t have plans laid out in stone. We just decided we would simply head out and see what there was to see on the way. It was a good thing because the day started with a little bump. My friend locked her keys in her car which delayed us an hour. Had we mapped out a timeline, we both would have been stressed out before we even got on the road – to take a de-stressing day trip.
As it turned out, we drove into the little town where we knew a winery was and found a little place called the Rock Café right around lunch time. It had a bit of an old log cabin look and feel and we weren’t sure what we were getting ourselves into. But we quickly realized we’d stumbled upon a treasure. The food was beyond spectacular and certainly nothing you would expect in a small town in Oklahoma. And certainly not anything we could have mapped out. We left there so happy and FULLfilled and made our way down the road to the winery.
We walked into the cutest little old country home with an adorable little gift shop as you enter, complete with a tasting bar. We would have filled up the car with our finds if we’d had the means to do so, but we each found something special we’d wanted forever. Not just a little knick-knack we liked, but really unique items that met our long-time desires. Then, to reveal the divine grace of our day, we were invited to enjoy a glass of wine on a most peaceful deck overlooking the picturesque vineyards. Ahhhhh!
No, this kind of life has no map. A map shows the landscape, and we did use our map apps for logistics, but we didn’t need a map to lean in and explore and experience. From there, we had a few twists and turns when a couple places we wanted to see were closed, and if we’d been in app mode, we would have been ticked the app hadn’t informed us. Instead, we simply found other things to do and allowed the day to divinely unfold.
I’m grateful for the day with my friend and the gifts and the joy the day bathed us in. I’m grateful for the convenience of my map app, but mostly, that every time I use it, I will be reminded, life is not mapped out, life is not an app.