When I was in elementary school my grandparents sold their farm and moved to the city for health reasons. Fortunately for my cousins and me there was a great park within walking distance from their new house. One day, my parents and I were visiting grandma and grandpa and I asked if I could go to the park. “Are you sure you know the way?” my dad asked. To which I responded, “Yes,” with great confidence and enthusiasm. It was my first time to navigate the journey by myself and made it there without a hitch.

However, my return trip was very different.

At the outset, I made a wrong turn and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until I’d walked 10 minutes that I realized something was off. Nothing looked familiar. When I realized I was lost I did something that is wired into us. In my fear and panic, I ran. And the more lost I felt, the faster I ran.

That doesn’t just happen to 10 year olds at their grandparents’ house. It happens to college students preparing for the marketplace. It happens to us at various stages of our career. It happens when: vision is cloudy, budgets are tight, we’re not sure where we stand with our supervisor, and the pressure to produce is on.

When we feel like we’ve lost our way or the road is unfamiliar, something in many of us shouts, “Pick up the pace! You’ve got to figure this out fast!” So, we do more and we do it faster. Our panic (whether low-grade or all-out) tells us that our increased activity will fix it. We take off, filling our calendar, moving quickly, looking frantically for confirmation. We cover a lot of ground but even with all our busyness we are not getting any closer to home.

Looking back, there were three things that God helped me do to get my bearings and find my way back to where I belonged.

• 1. I STOPPED. I can’t remember if I stopped out of exhaustion, embarrassment, or resignation. It doesn’t matter. The point was – I stopped. Standing at an intersection I had to seriously consider which direction I needed to go.

-Does any of this sound familiar? Are you at an intersection? Do you need to take the next 30 minutes and stop all the running you’ve been doing and ask the Holy Spirit to examine your heart? Do you need to ask Him what your work is to do right now?

• 2. I SLOWED. I couldn’t stay at the intersection. There were no cell phones to call home. My parents didn’t even know I was lost. I had to move forward at a clip that allowed me to take in my surroundings.

-Are you moving at a pace that allows you to pay attention? What are the landmarks and sign posts that point you in the right direction? Maybe you need to do something really practical like revisit your job description, your last performance review, your personal mission statement, or your journal. Perhaps you need to have a conversation with your boss.

• 3. I LISTENED. I knew that if I could walk south I would eventually hear two things. One was the traffic on 3rd Avenue. It was a busy major east – west thoroughfare. The other were cheers coming from the University intramural fields. After moving slowly and deliberately for only a few minutes I heard both. I followed the sounds, recognized where I was, turned left and walked a block to my grandparents’.

-What can you listen for that would get you back to where you belong? What is your ear tuned toward? Are you incorporating silence in your times of prayer? Do you have one or two people in your life that can listen with you? These aren’t necessarily casual friends, but people whose relationship with God you respect.

I pulled up a map of my grandparents’ neighborhood as I pondered this story. While it felt like I was miles from their house I was never more than a few blocks away. If you are scrambling from feeling off course today, I bet you’re not as far from home as you think you are either…unless you keep running.