The topic at a meeting recently was about U turns. Wow, did it get me thinking. There have been many in my life. Not getting the job I wanted after seminary made me want to give up ministry, but the U turn was that I found another job that had me moving to Seattle. Unfortunately, I was the victim of a crime just after I arrived. My friends in Boston thought I would make a U Turn and go back to Boston. I didn’t and would stay and thrive.

The new city had me taking U Turns all the time since I got lost so often and Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet. My best friend died, and I chose to deal with it by drinking more and more. A counselor finally told me I was on the road to being an Alcoholic and if I didn’t stop, I would become like my mother. She said I was playing Russian Roulette with my life and the life of my young daughter.

I needed a U turn, and a change of direction. AA was there to help me make the biggest U turn of my life. The fellowship provided me with Good Orderly Direction. I was no longer lost.

Sometimes I still feel lost and lonely, and I don’t know what to do. Then I remember that we aren’t lost, we need direction from a power greater than ourselves.

This prayer written by Fr. Tomas Merton is the one I go to whenever I feel lost:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

 And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Fr. Thomas Merton