Burning the Maps

Burning the Maps

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and we went out, not knowing where he was going. Hebrews 11:8 NAS

Have you ever gone out somewhere not knowing where you were going? How far did you go? Was it a foreign country? Did you leave your friends and family and all that was familiar behind? How long did you stay? This verse amazes me. He went on a promise of his inheritance.

I’m the kind of person who likes to know where I am going. I am what I call “directionally illiterate”—I have little internal sense of direction. I am HEAVILY reliant on my GPS and maps to know where I am and where I am going. I still don’t intuitively know my right from my left; I have to take a moment to think and figure it out. If you spin me around a few times, I have no idea where I am. I eventually will remember my way around familiar areas, but it takes me longer than most. My brain just doesn’t map well. As an outside sales rep I would drive all over the New Jersey and New York. I purchased an atlas to keep in my car in case the GPS spazzed out so I could still find my way home.

Late April 2017 I had a troubling dream. In the dream I was giving birth to a baby, the baby’s head and one arm came out, but then the process stopped. I got up and started to go about normal life again—with a half born baby awkwardly dangling between my legs!! I woke up really troubled by the dream. Metaphorically, the dream was accurate. In many aspects of my life I felt like I was STUCK in the middle of transition. There was a sense of urgency to the dream. A half born baby could not survive. I took a week off of work to stop going “about normal life” and really seek to hear God and what He wanted to say and where He wanted to transition me to. I found a spot to camp as a place to get alone and away from distractions. I cleared out my car of all my work literature, packed it full of my camping gear, picked up some firewood and headed out. I arrived with enough time to cook dinner and head to bed. The next day I was planning on making a fire, but I realized I hadn’t brought any paper or kindling! I was wracking my brain to figure what I could use. I laughed to myself, “I could use my atlas as kindling!” My mind went to an evocative line in a poem by Nizar Qabbani:

The day I met you I tore up

All my maps

And my prophecies

Like an Arab stallion I smelled the rain

of you

Before it wet me

Heard the pulse of your voice

Before you spoke

Undid your hair with my hands

Before you had braided it

I laughed at myself for the dramatic wanderings of my mind. But that line, the day I met you I tore up all my maps, kept tumbling through my mind. The imagery, meeting someone and not caring where I was going anymore as long as I was with them. How fearful I was of being lost, and not being able to find my way home. Geographically. Spiritually. Relationally. Here I had stopped my life to get away and seek God about direction in my life, and I have this thought to burn my atlas, my plan B on how to get home. Ooh, He was digging deep here!

Even on a physical level I didn’t want to burn my maps! I liked having my backup plan, my own little security. To burn my maps was asking me to be all in. To say to God, it doesn’t matter where I go, as long as you are with me! To let Him lead me, and when I didn’t feel His leading, to stay still and wait on Him. To not jump the gun and run out on my own strength and ideas and agenda apart from Him.

I wanted to dismiss all this and just move past it. I had brought my old ipad to be able to type up some notes over the next few days. My ipad is the original edition, and is obsolete apart from being an oversized ipod to play music on and typing up notes. But it seemed like a good alternative to bringing my laptop camping. I hadn’t used the ipad in years. I opened up the notes app to type up some thoughts, and there is the Nizar Qabbani poem I had cut and pasted it into my notes some years earlier to save it. The day I met you I tore up all my maps. It was too much to be a coincidence. I knew God was speaking, and too clearly to ignore.

He can be so gentle, yet so sharp. He loves us way too much to let us stay stagnant. I laid down every back up plan, every plan B, every way I was working in my own strength apart from Him and His purposes for me. I symbolically started my fire with my atlas pages. I started with my least favorite states, the ones I wasn’t planning to travel to. I still had quite a bit of the atlas left and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to burn ALL of it.  “God, do I need to burn all of them?” Yes, I needed to burn them all. How often do I want to give God the things on the peripheral, as an offering of “sacrifice”, while holding back all that is closest to my heart. I burned every last page, cover to cover. Maybe life would look much different than I had hoped or dreamed. Did I trust Him?

I felt a little naked the next few weeks driving around. I was very conscious about not having the crutch in the back of the car “just in case.” But, that was over a year ago now, and I rarely think about those maps anymore.

Until I was driving through Nebraska a few weeks ago.

I was on a solo road trip home from Wyoming, and I had booked an Airbnb near what I thought was the suburbs of Omaha. It wasn’t. It was miles and miles of corn fields, and the GPS no longer knew where I was. My little blue dot hadn’t moved since I got off the highway. Even worse, most of the roads had no names or signs! The road made a curve that didn’t seem to be along the way I should be going. I turned around and made the turn I thought I missed. More rolling fields of corn, and not a home in sight. I kept driving, and the blue dot never caught up with me. Finally! A marked road! I was on the right path. I counted the roads until the next turn I should make. Still not a home within view. I am still baffled how I got to my stay that evening. It feels a bit like a miracle.

I’ve been thinking about that evening a lot. Partially because when I finally arrived, things felt a bit “off”—I didn’t really feel safe, but there weren’t any blaring red flags to leave (more on this later), but also because it has connected me back to the burning of my maps. How I felt the loss of those maps in a time I was lost. I wanted something tangible to hold on to. Though, I don’t know if they would have helped me! It felt like a lesson in living a Spirit led life.

Lately, God feels very quiet. Like I’m a bit lost, and just fumbling forward on what’s next. It feels like I have little indication if I’m on the right path, and the metaphorical blue dot stopped moving a ways back on my “map.” The Spirit’s nudgings have gotten more and more subtle, they seem so easy to miss or dismiss. He’s asking me to grow, to engage. For my spirit to partner with His. To start listening MORE to those inner nudges that often have no external reasons or indicators. There are a dozen things I could make happen with my connections and abilities, but none of them FEEL right.

The waiting carves a deeper capacity to be filled. All sorts of anxieties and weakness and loneliness comes up in the stillness of waiting. And trust me, I have wondered—am I being led somewhere I even want to be?? Here is where I need to trust that God is a GOOD Father, and gives His beloved GOOD things. It feels as if by faith I am being called to venture off my map in obedience to a place God is calling me to. Not knowing where I am going.