How Did I Get Here?

          This week our students we continued in their series write.rewrite focusing on the stories of our lives.  Here is a snapshot of this series, “We are all drawn to great stories - whether that's on the big screen, small screen, in a book or elsewhere. But we may be completely unaware of one simple truth - that our lives are a story as well. The decisions we make every day are shaping the plot. The things we do, believe and trust determine what is being written. And for many of us, the story we are scripting could be so much more if we let God write, or even rewrite, our story. It’s the story we long for, the one our hearts truly desire.”

Each week includes a discussion question/point that our parents and their students are encouraged to wrestle through together.  The second week’s discussion questions read as follows (for the parent to answer), “Have you ever found yourself in a place in your life where you wondered, ‘How did I get here?’  If you retraced your steps, what were the decisions you made that led you there?  Each one of you take a decision in your life (whether good or bad) and track the steps that led you to the end result.”

            Directions are something that I have thankfully always had a knack for.  This is not because I am man, who believes you should never ask for directions, it’s just something that comes easily to me.  If I drive somewhere one time I am usually able to get back there again without the assistance of a GPS, my phone, or a map.  I can’t explain why this is the case for me, but it works wonderfully when I’m trying to get to and from places easily.  I first became aware of this when I decided at the last minute one year to drive to our family reunion.  I was working at a summer camp and wanted it to be a surprise to my family that I was coming, so I had to figure out a way to get to where I was going.  I went to the local gas station to buy a map, quickly scouted it out, and started driving.  A few hours later I was there and to this day I am easily able to get back to that town from almost anywhere.  This ability to understand directions and travel easily has been something that I love and it has helped me out several times throughout my life.  However, as someone who has directions come easily to him, the same can also be said for when our lives don’t go as planned and there is a hiccup in the process.

            As I look back on my life the most noticeable occurrence of having my life track shifted came when I was preparing to ask my wife to marry me.   We had been dating for a while and knew from the first date that we were going to get married.  With that in mind, I perfected a wonderful proposal, picked out the perfect ring, and prepared myself for that challenging conversation with her dad.  The last piece of this puzzle was where the hiccup hit; I had arranged to sit down with my father-in-law at Bob Evans for breakfast one morning.  I had the entire discussion laid out in my mind, with a joyful acceptance coming from him and a welcome to the family.  However, as we started down that road in the discussion I was suddenly stopped in my tracks.  As I asked for my wife’s hand in marriage, her father replied with a direct, “No and here is why.”  He then pulled a list out of his pocket as to why he wouldn’t approve of me marrying his daughter.  As you can imagine I was crushed and ended up leaving the restaurant in tears.  I called Mindy telling her everything and then it hit us both.  We had stopped communicating with her parents about our relationship.  She was still living at home with them and we had completely isolated ourselves from them.  We stopped telling them about the progression of the relationships, how we had worked through things that were once an issue, and how much we were committed to making this work.  After that realization, we sat down with her parents and walked through the issues that we had worked through together and then her parents seemed more at ease with me marrying their little girl. Seven years later, we have a wonderful relationship with her parents, but it still amazes me how quickly we veered off course.  It wasn’t until we stepped back that we realized where the break was and the problems that it caused.  By retracing our steps we were able to determine the best remedy to the problem and work towards a solution.

            Have you ever had a time where you stepped back and looked at the situation and asked, “How did I get here?”  Did you take the time to retrace your steps and see if there was an answer to this question, along with a possible solution?  My challenge to you this week is to look back through the decisions that you have made where you have asked the question, “How did I get here?” and seek to find some lessons that you could learn through wrong turns and directions that were not followed.  As your do so communicate this to loved one or close friend in order to have accountability for the future and work towards staying on the right path.