A hidden direction

During one of the lowest times of my life, a friend gave me the book My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen.  Best book I have ever read.  It gave me the hope and strength and understanding of life I needed so badly.  I have since read it 4 or 5 more times and I never seem to stop learning from it.

The author has been counseling people with chronic and terminal illness for more than twenty years.  She is the co-founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program and in one of my favorite chapter she talks about the year they installed a labyrinth at Commonweal like the one in the picture I posted above.  It is used as a walking meditation and the distance from start to finish is about a third of a mile.  (Side note...the newish Intermountain Medical Center has one of these on its grounds that I like to visit and walk.  My husband and I also made our own version which hangs in our kitchen...not as pretty, but it reminds me of a great lesson every time I look at it)

This is what she says about the labyrinth:

"Walking the labyrinth is deceptive.  At the beginning one seems to be heading directly for the center when one is actually farthest away from it, and moments before reaching it one is walking near the outermost edge of the circle...
Many insights can be gained in this walking meditation.  The first time I stood in the center, I had an odd thought.  Lying around me was the path I had walked from the beginning with all its complexity, frustrations, and many turnings.  It was complete, and I suddenly realized that, despite my experience to the contrary, I had always been heading for the center.  Perhaps this was true of my life as well.  Could events that seemed meaningless, or even wasteful, be taking me to a destination as surely as the twisting and turning path I had just followed?  Perhaps my path only seemed random because I was still on it.  At the end, from the center, would I someday see my life as complete and whole and recognize a hidden direction and pattern that redeemed loss and failure and pain and utterly changed their meaning and value?"

These words reach out of the page and wrap around me every time I read them.  I find so much comfort in the possibility that all that doesn't make sense in my life may someday have meaning.  I have already seen evidence of this truth in very small parts of my life.  As a child, I pictured my life following a path that would bring certain outcomes.  The path I'm on is quite different.  I thought I would graduate from high school, get a killer bachelors degree followed by a graduate degree that would enable me to change lives and make lots of money.  I thought I would serve a mission that would fulfill me and make me into a spiritual giant and glorify my life in some unforeseen way.  I thought I'd have 3 or 4 kids by the time I was in my early thirties, travel the world, and have adventures with my husband and kids.  Oh, and I also pictured somewhere in there suddenly developing self-confidence, charisma, grace, and leadership skills.

(Wow, I sure was optimistic...)

So, some of the things I imagined have happened, but many of those dreams, and especially the timeline of said dreams, have just passed by as life has continued on...  I've felt disillusioned many times.  And angry.  And discouraged.  BUT, in the last few years I have tried coming to terms with all this.  I may not have achieved all I thought I would.  Life has thrown me a few situations I never saw coming.  But maybe I'm the person I should have been all along.  Maybe those twistings and turnings were actually taking me to the place I was supposed to get to all along.

What if there is great wisdom in the missing of some things?  Of being on a path that doesn't seem to make any sense until we stand in the middle and look over all that we've done, all the places we've been, all those we've met and shared life with?