Still blurry-eyed and barely awake, I once started out on a trip from West Virginia at 3:00 AM so that I could make it back to Indiana in time for an important baseball tournament game that our oldest son was playing in.

After driving for about an hour in those early predawn hours, I began to have this strange feeling that something was off. The road seemed to be heading down towards lower elevations than I remembered from my travels to West Virginia, and the roadsigns were towards towns that I didn’t recognize having passed on my way to West Virginia. Even the terrain was different than I remembered it to be.

When I saw a sign for Virginia Beach, I had this sinking realization that I was going the opposite direction from what I intended to be. I wasn’t traveling towards the midwest but instead, I was traveling towards the beaches of the east coast.

While the beach might be fun normally, it wasn’t where I wanted to be then. I had other places to be, and things that I didn’t want to miss back home. Heading towards the beach was a disruption to my plans. I was in a new space that I didn’t knowingly sign up for.

I pulled off the road to get my bearings, only to realize how far off course I really was. Ugh. Not a good feeling at all.

That Feeling Of Being Lost

I’m sure you can think of a time in your own life where you were physically lost and maybe it’s a bit how you are feeling now at an emotional, psychological and/or spiritual level.

We’re about day 6 into this new space of life with the coronavirus pandemic. About 6 days ago the direction of our lives as we know it for most of us began to change. And it continues. It seems moment by moment our immediate and global world is changing.

This is a space we haven’t been before. We didn’t intentionally choose it. This isn’t the course any of us would have voluntarily set out on. It’s causing us to ask new questions, say things we haven’t had to say before, making us do things we haven’t had to do before. Feel things we haven’t felt before.

Last week we were heading a certain direction, and now it’s another.

Last week we pretty much knew what this week held, and now we don’t.

We have no idea really where this is all going because we’ve never been here before.

The Roadmap Has Changed

I don’t know about you but in some ways, I can feel lost as we navigate hour by hour through this pandemic. The maps have changed, the familiar route has been closed, and we’re all on a detour trying to find our way. And I’m even someone who likes change.

We feel lost when called upon to give up something important to us- classes, work, church, study abroad, our routines and daily life, meaningful volunteer activities, connections with friends, visits to aging parents, weddings, trips, reunions, etc. Can we just all agree that this is HARD??

So many important and beautiful moments that give meaning, purpose and joy to our lives that we now have little to no control over. We thought we basically knew what was coming up in the next few months. Now we don’t as much.

I want you to know that it is OK to feel a little, or a lot, lost right now. We are in the midst of significant change and resulting losses. I have a firm conviction that allowing ourselves to feel what we feel is part of being able to learn, grow and to move forward from something.

The emotions we experience- sadness, disorientation, confusion, lostness, etc- are clues to something going on deeper within us. But if we don’t even allow ourselves to feel it, we miss out on the ways it can enlighten and transform us eventually.

Henry David Thoreau said:

Not until we are lost do we really begin to understand ourselves.

Is there goodness somewhere in all of this? Of course. And in a future post, I might talk about how do we allow these feelings of lostness to be an impetus for our growth. But for now, you need to know that it is ok to feel what you are feeling during these really crazy and strange times.

Finally, find someone you can talk to, while keeping your distance of course, about what is making you feel lost, or disoriented, or out of control. Giving witness to it is the starting point for the growth and transformation that lies in the wings of this whole experience. It’s part of how we find our way in this new world.

And in case you’re wondering, I did make it to my son’s baseball game just as he threw the starting pitch to the game.

Usually just because we feel lost, doesn’t mean we really are.

Photo by Thanh Mai Nguyen on Unsplash