40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#5

5. The Path seems to spend as much time leading away from the center as toward it.

When I started walking my labyrinth, various insights came to me, just because that's the way I'm wired. I can't spread compost in the garden without thinking about how even outworn beliefs, ideas, coping mechanisms and failures, when mixed and turned and steeped in God's grace, can help to bring new life. One of the first insights from the labyrinth that really felt like a Deep Truth was this one. So many times in my life I've been trying to reach some goal that seemed to take me "around Robin Hood's barn" with no apparent progress toward where I thought I needed to be.

Take writing. I've been writing since I was a child, sold my first story at 11 years old, and knew by my teens that it was what I really wanted to Do When I Grew Up. By 24 or so, God had made it clear to me that it wasn't just what I wanted to do, but was what I was created to do. Or so I thought. . . I began sending things "out" (a very frightening word to a writer, believe me!) and had some success, and--then life kept getting in the way!

About six years ago--(maybe more; I get confused)--I really thought I was starting to "get somewhere." Notice the language? I had made almost enough to live on for a few years, and now had some complete novels and a kids' book, and believed it was time to seek out an agent. As I began that process, my life was falling apart and I couldn't see why. It turned out that my husband was slowly being eaten alive by a horrible disease called Fronto-Temporal Degeneration. And there, in one short sentence, you have a diagnosis it took years to come to. By the time we knew what it was, he was requiring more and more of my time and all of my emotional energy. More than I had, in fact. Writing, aside from some paying jobs that helped me to pay for some adult medical daycare, was sidelined. I was heading directly away from the goal. Not just my goal--the goal I had been so certain God was sending me toward.

And I'm still sure. I think these past agonizing years will make me a better writer and a better speaker. That's partly because I've learned from my labyrinth that the same paths that seem to be taking you further and further from the center may, in fact, be an important part of the road home.