Working with college students naturally reminds me at times of my own college experience. Plenty of positive memories come to mind, but sometimes I wonder what might have changed if I hadn't been so worried about how my life was going to turn out. Well, I figured it would turn out ok, but felt a lot of pressure to know exactly how to get there.
Conversations with adults back then went something like this:
Adult: Wow, you're in college already! What's your major?
Me: Elementary Education...wait, actually Psychology...I mean, General Studies. Just kidding, Pastoral Care. Ok, final answer: Religious Studies.
Adult: Nice! What are you planning to do with that?
Me: Get a job? I don't know...just probably won't work for the church.
Adult: Ah, so you're still figuring it out. Don't worry, I can help you fix this in two minutes or less. What do you like to do?
Me: Ummm...help people?
Adult: Ok, ok. But like, what is your passion? What makes you come alive?
Me (blank stare): Oh look, my parents are back! It was great to catch up!
I often wondered what was wrong with me when people talked about following their passions into career paths. What made me come alive? I had no idea. I just wanted everyone to be ok. I had little experience about caring wildly about anything except helping people calm down and have what they needed to be ok. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any majors, degrees, or certificates in "making things ok." So I just prayed, stressed about it, tried to avoid conversations with well-meaning adults, and just took college classes I enjoyed until I could graduate figuring I'd somehow know what to do when the time was right.
It's fun retelling that to college students now, a couple decades later after many life adventures and enjoying my full-time job. God for sure knows how to take us on our own unique journey when we trust Him.
But a life-long interest since my college days has been paying attention to the rare moments when my soul wakes up for a second to reveal...a passion. Something that makes me come alive. A feeling, belief, or opinion I can actually own. Here are a few examples I've discovered.
- Outraged and protective, ready to right a wrong.
- Surrounded by voices singing in worship.
- Listening to student missionaries share their stories of overcoming and transformation.
- Anticipating needs and finding practical solutions.
- Getting lost in the woods (and finding the way out).
It's that last one I don't really understand, but pretty sure it's the first discovery I made while still in college. Some of my best "come alive" moments happened this way. My parents will not be thrilled to know this has happened enough times that I have discovered a pattern that includes five factors to qualify for the best "come alive" result:
- You can't plan to get lost in the woods. It has to happen accidentally.
- There needs to be a time limit to add some extra pressure, like a gate closure time, or sunset.
- No serious threats perceived (no creepy people or wild animals).
- Little or no cell phone service.
- Most importantly: there has to be a moment when you genuinely wonder how this is going to turn out.
I guess this is one of those things you either get or you don't. It's ok if you don't. I expect most people to not be ok with this kind of experience, which was why I was absolutely delighted recently when I stumbled into another lost-in-the-woods adventure with two young friends of mine who definitely got it. It was the best one yet, because it was shared.
It all started innocently enough. My two student workers and I were getting some fresh air during an afternoon break from some meetings we were attending at Campus Ministries Convention at a camp I worked at 20 years ago. After the tried-and-true paths, we ventured off into some of the forgotten corners and pathways. Ghost-town cabins, an abandoned nature center being reclaimed by nature, and weathered low-ropes structures inspired all my best stories and ramblings, which my young friends tolerated amazingly well.
As we got to the end of the low-ropes ruins, I somehow convinced them and myself that if we stayed on the trail, it would eventually connect with the main lake trail. Whether we took the wrong "main trail" at a fork in the path at some point, or if the trail never actually did connect, we will never know. What we did discover was that the trail we chose eventually disappeared, and we found ourselves scrambling up and down ravines, going on our best guesses as to which direction the lake would be.
The moment I knew I had hired the best student workers ever was after a few ravine scrambles, before we were technically "lost," when I asked them if they wanted to turn around and just go back the way we came. There was a slight pause and then: "We're committed." Couldn't have been prouder, even as I apologized for leading them into the wilderness with a little too much confidence.
For awhile we kind of just went off our "spidy-senses," choosing a steep hill climb that we thought was in the right direction. The tough climb did a great job of reality-checking our adventure. At the top I realized a few things:
- We were indeed lost. And also had no food or even water.
- We were missing supper and the sun would go down in about 30 minutes or so.
- Thankfully there were no serious threats (although I was a little worried about poison ivy).
- My phone had one bar of service off and on, but not enough for my GPS to work, and only 12% battery life anyway.
- I was genuinely starting to wonder if we were going to get back before dark, and how exactly this was going to turn out.
What I forgot to say is that the "coming alive" part actually tends to happen once you find you're way out of the predicament, so I can't say that I was at a 10 in my "aliveness" at this exact moment. In fact, I was feeling a little more like a responsible adult, and starting to feel bad I got these poor kids into this situation. I started hearing the chastisement of my colleagues--assuming we made it back. (Ok, I never seriously thought we wouldn't make it back, but it sounds more dramatic). Then I wondered how long it would even take for people to miss us. But even though I wasn't at a 10, I would say I was at a solid 7.5 just because I knew we had passed the threshold of the final ingredient of an epic adventure: admitting we didn't know where to go next.
It actually didn't take long for one of my student workers to discover that she did get GPS on her phone so we could at least see where the lake was. So our hill-scrambling continued, eventually turning into finding trails and more hill-scrambling until we were dumped back on the lake trail--exactly where I predicted the original trail would connect, by the way. Definitely a 10.
When people have asked how my trip was, this story always leaks out first. I can't help it. And yet I still don't exactly know why getting lost and found in the woods, especially with fellow adventurers, is so beautiful to me. Maybe it's the required focus, the team-building aspect of using everyone's strengths to solve a real-life problem, or maybe the thrill of brushing up against danger just enough to appreciate security and predictability.
What I do know is the gratitude to God that pours out of my heart during these kinds of adventures. I know He's with us in the middle of the unknowns, helping us make one decision at a time, giving mercy when some of them are not the best. And I'm grateful He made me and a few others on this planet quirky enough to appreciate the unfolding of a good, unpredictable story, trusting that He'll lead us through somehow in the end.
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