The Search for Something Sacred
When I was in high school, I was a Boy Scout. One summer at camp, a few friends and I decided we were going to do something bold. Something that felt half adventurous and half forbidden.
We were going to try and find an old Indian burial ground.
It was off the camp property, hidden deep in the woods, and mostly passed down as legend. But we had heard whispers about it from older scouts, and even our English teacher who had once been a camper himself. He had been there. He’d seen it.
So we studied the map, planned our route, and set off one evening while the rest of the camp headed to the jamboree. We had a compass, a few flashlights, and the kind of youthful certainty that only comes from being fifteen and invincible.
But what we didn’t account for were the storms.
A few weeks before summer camp began, a series of strong storms had ripped through the North Country and downed hundreds of trees. The trails we were supposed to follow weren’t just overgrown, they were gone. Markers were buried. Paths were obscured. The map no longer matched the landscape.
We weren’t lost…yet. But we were disoriented.
And suddenly, this adventure felt less like a scavenger hunt and more like a pilgrimage; one we didn’t know how to finish. This wasn’t just an adventure. It was a reckoning. Because we weren’t just going somewhere hard. We were going somewhere where the trail no longer existed.
Looking back now, it all feels like something out of the movie Stand By Me. A group of kids on the cusp of becoming something more, chasing a whispered story through the woods, trying to find not just a place, but themselves.
Years later, I would find myself in another kind of wilderness; one without maps or markers, but just as defining.
That’s what divorce felt like, too.
The Trail I Didn’t Choose
Some trails call to us. Others corner us. And some disappear all together.
I didn’t set out looking for this one. I woke up on it.
Alone.
Disoriented.
Everything familiar, behind me.
Nothing clear ahead.
It felt like being lost in the woods at camp again; disoriented, off-trail, trying to make sense of a map that no longer matched the terrain.
In those early days after the divorce, I wasn’t chasing anything. I was just trying to keep walking.
The Question That Found Me
Not long after, someone asked me a question that caught me off guard:
“What dreams are you chasing now?”
It was meant to be a hopeful question. The kind you ask someone rebuilding, someone trying to find themselves.
Because when a marriage ends, it isn’t just the past that unravels. The present reshapes itself. And the future, especially the dreams you built together, gets rewritten.
That question opened a window to hope. A fresh start. A new trailhead.
But I didn’t answer with a five-year plan or a bucket list.
I just paused, and said what was most true:
“I’m not chasing dreams right now. I’m walking by faith.”
It wasn’t bitter or cynical. It was just honest.
Because in that season, I wasn’t sprinting toward anything shiny. I was learning how to put one foot in front of the other, even when the trail had vanished beneath me.
When the Map No Longer Matches the Terrain
After the collapse of a marriage, most people talk about the grief. But fewer talk about disorientation.
The sense that you had a map. A shared life, predictable rhythms, summer plans, college funds, holiday traditions, and now none of it applies. The trail is gone. The future’s topography has changed.
Psychologist Pauline Boss calls this kind of disorientation ambiguous loss: the kind of grief that has no closure. “It’s the most stressful kind of loss,” she writes, “because it defies resolution and disrupts your identity.”
You’re not grieving a death.
You’re grieving a story you once believed would unfold.
A version of your life that now lives only in memory.
When we experience this kind of loss; of a marriage, a shared identity, a vision of the future. What we need isn’t a mountaintop. We need a new way to walk. .
Faith Isn’t a Shortcut. It’s a Step-by-Step Descent into the Valley.
In the wilderness, when the trail disappears, the worst thing you can do is panic and bolt forward. That’s how people get lost.
You stop, breathe, and orient.
And you choose the next right step, not the fastest one.
In Boy Scouts, we learned an acronym for moments like that: STOP (Stop, Think, Observe, and Plan).
That night in the wilderness, making our way toward the Indian burial grounds as the sun slipped behind the ridge, we realized we had no hope of finding our destination before dark. With the light gone, and the forest closing in around us emotions flared, and the group began to splinter. Finally, out of frustration more than wisdom, I shouted, “Stop!”
So we did. Right there in the middle of a fern field, we stood still. And then, in the quiet, we heard it, faint campfire songs drifting through the trees. That sound became our compass, guiding us back to camp.
Post-divorce life felt a lot like that. The map gone, the trail lost, emotions frayed, until I learned to STOP. To quiet the panic, and take in the truth of where I was. To notice what still remained. And to begin, however slowly, charting the next step toward home.
Faith, for me, wasn’t some transcendent lightning strike.
It looked like:
- Getting up to make breakfast for my kids even when I felt hollow.
- Choosing to listen with openness in hard co-parenting conversations, even when I felt hurt.
- Taking long hikes alone to let the ache breathe and unspoken prayers rise.
- Writing journal entries that weren’t pretty, but were honest.
It was slow. Uneven. Holy.
It was less about certainty and more about traction.
Walking by faith meant letting go of the illusion of control and learning to live with open hands.
It meant descending before I could ascend.
When the Map Stops Working, Trust the Compass
During one climb in Colorado’s backcountry, I lost the trail just below the ridge. The cairns had disappeared into a snowfield, and my GPS flickered with uncertainty.
I froze.
Not in panic, but in reverence. Because I knew the wrong step could cost me.
And that’s what divorce often feels like: not just grief, but disorientation. A sudden silence where once there was certainty. The loss of a shared “map.”
But as every seasoned mountaineer knows, when the map stops working, you don’t rush. You trust your compass. You orient yourself to what is still true, even if the route has changed.
For me, that compass became:
- The laughter of my children
- The feel of the trail beneath my feet
- The still, small voice within
- The belief that love (real, rooted love) would find me again
Don’t Chase. Abide.
There’s a difference between chasing and abiding.
Chasing is all fire and fury, it’s forward motion at all costs.
Abiding is steady and sacred, it’s staying rooted in what matters.
In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples, “Abide in me.” Not run, achieve or Not perform.
Abide.
That word means to remain. To dwell. To be at home in something, even when the terrain is unstable.
After my divorce, I stopped chasing the summit and started learning how to abide in God. In the moment. In the stillness of uncertainty. It didn’t look impressive on the outside, but it changed me on the inside.
Here’s the thing: God doesn’t ask us to have the faith to finish, only the faith to take the next step. Hebrews calls Jesus the “author and finisher of our faith,” which means the weight of completing the journey is not on us. His Word is “a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).
A lamp doesn’t illuminate the whole trail; it only lights the next few steps. I think that’s intentional. If we saw the heartache, betrayal, pain, and sorrow that lay ahead, we might never agree to move forward. So instead, He invites us to trust Him for the step right in front of us, and then the next one after that.
The Trail Rebuilds You
So if you’re here in the fog of what’s next, I want to say this:
You don’t have to chase anything right now.
You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is walk slowly, with faith, through a forest you don’t yet understand.
This kind of walk won’t make headlines. But it will make you whole.
Because every trail; even the foggy ones, reshapes the soul that walks it
For more on how spiritual journeys can plateau or falter in the middle of the trail, see this thoughtful reflection on personal spiritual decline and this compelling exploration of how even subtle neglect can weaken our faith muscles. Read more below:
Reflective Questions:
- Where in your life are you feeling the pressure to chase when you’re really being called to walk?
- What dreams have you had to lay down — and what quiet hopes are beginning to stir in their place?
- What would it look like to stop performing and start abiding?
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