Lost and Found

In her new book, "An Alter in the World", Barbara Brown Taylor has a chapter titled "The Practice of Getting Lost" in which she explores the fact that spiritual awakenings often happen when one is off the beaten paths of life. It is only when we are lost that we truly discover who we are and where God resides. Getting lost may be getting sick, losing a job, losing someone close to you, going through a divorce or having an affair. Or it can mean losing your way in the woods or on the streets of a city.

Describing an accident that she was in, Barbra found herself in the hospital. And it was here in her lostness that she began to understand the miracles that were taking place around her.

"The first miracle was that people took care of me when I could not take care of myself." An ambulance had fetched her after the accident, someone stitched her head, a stranger brought food and so on.

"The second miracle was how safe I felt," she continues, "not in nay conventional sense. My head hurt like hell...Yet as badly as I was frightened, I was also held."

When I read this I though of all of the times that I have been lost. In Poland once and in Cuba. When I moved into my own place of years of marriage and then into another when I found Julie (getting lost almost always involved getting found too).

Then I thought of last year at this time when SABHC was destroyed by those who did not want it, Union Mission found itself in major distress over taxes, and we were on the brink of closing. I remember being told in my office and having to sit down because I felt that someone had knocked me in the stomach. My eyes filled with moisture. I could see 21 years of hard word evaporating and hundreds of people who relied on me being let down. I was lost!

The first miracle was Herb McKenzie and Jerry Rainey of the Board of Directors literally moving in assuming control of Union Mission when I was too overwhelmed to make a decision. They ran things and waited until I was in a position to work with them crawling our way to light again.

The second miracle was Julie recognizing that I needed a safe place to recover from the hurt and trauma and she made certain that this happened. Then she endured all of the healing that had to take place inside of me throughout this period.

The third miracle were the hundreds of people in this community who expressed their support and friendship at a time when Union Mission needed more than it could give. For decades it had been the other way around with us doing all of the giving. Now we needed the help.

Now it is exactly one year later. We are no longer lost and we have found a great many things because we were. I can still vivdly remember the feeling inside of me when I first learned that we were lost. It is one of the scars that I carry with me. But overwhelming that are the miracles that were found. There is a holiness in them that I also carry inside of me.