Circuitous

Circuitous.

It’s a cool word. Dennis used it one day and I had to look it up. (He has a Master’s degree and I don’t.)

Anyway, I like the word but I haven’t found a good way to use it in ordinary conversation. But I will use it here to impress my readers as I describe my path in life to this point. The word circuitous means meandering, indirect, wandering. For the most part that’s how my life has gone. Sounds negative and hopeless, doesn’t it? Guess it depends on how you look at it.

I never really had a direction or a passion or a dream that I developed early and heartily pursued. I knew I needed to have goals, because parents and teachers told me so, I just didn’t know what they should be or what they could be. So for many years I lived a circuitous existence – meandering around and seemingly going nowhere. (That may explain my chase for “Bimini” this blog was built upon.)

I wasn’t a drifter or a ne’er-do-well (as my mother would say) but I could gravitate easily to something new or different just because I didn’t have anything of my own to pursue. That led me down some paths that weren’t always bad or evil but they weren’t necessarily destinations to my heart’s desires either.

This especially showed itself as I went to college. I had no goal set – except to have a good time. (I guess I accomplished that occasionally.) But a career path was never a passion. I started out as a Music Major because I liked to sing and could sing well enough, I guess, to be accepted into the program. It didn’t take long for me to realize that, though I enjoyed music, I didn’t want to analyze it like a science. I wanted to appreciate it as an art form. They won’t let you do that at my college as a Music Major. They want you to be serious about your craft.

So I switched to theatre because they didn’t seem so serious over there. But I was a terrible actress and that became apparent pretty soon. I did get enough hours to have a minor in theatre. Big deal.

Next, I wandered over to the communications department and really enjoyed it and found that I didn’t lose interest so quickly. In fact, I liked it. I declared that as my major and literally by the grace of God graduated with a degree in Communications/Public Relations from the great University of Alabama.

I beat myself up emotionally for years for not having loftier goals until one day I realized that along my circuitous path I had picked up building blocks that laid the foundation for what I’m doing now. I communicate – books, curriculum, articles, and…this blog. I sing and write music and drama. My ever-wandering path to the theatre department pushed me to an audition for a summer job performing at Six Flags Over Georgia in the live show. That led me to my husband. His jobs in church music showed me a need for creativity among the Body.

So here I am. Not arrived at all but still on a journey, although a little less circuitous.

There are lots of great quotes about goals and dreams, journeys and destinations. Ernest Hemingway said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” Unfortunately Papa Hemingway ended his journey with a gun to his head.

Robert Louis Stevenson said, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” That’s encouraging. The journey is ongoing and I’m thinking I’ll probably never arrive.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”  That sounds good, too, but a little exhausting to me right now.

One of the best philosophies I’ve heard lately about where our paths lead us is in a lyric (directed to God) by Laura Story:

What if Your blessings come through raindrops?

What if Your healing comes through tears?

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is a revealing of a greater thirst

This world can’t satisfy?

And what if trials of this life

The rain the storms the hardest nights

Are Your mercies in disguise?

© 2011 New Spring | Laura Stories (Admin. by Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing, Inc.) | (Admin. by Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing, Inc.)

This speaks of hardships and trials that are just intrinsic to life but if I may I’d like to apply it to my circuitous path – through my choices and life’s hard knocks (some I brought upon myself), they were God pushing me in the right direction and lovingly guiding me home.