I Have No Idea Where I Am Going

-Maria Enns

I came across this prayer this week by Thomas Merton. Merton was a Trappist monk and theologian who lived in the mid-twentieth century—a man who spent his entire adult life in devoted pursuit of God and yet wrote with stunning honesty about uncertainty and unknowing. That combination is what makes him worth listening to. He wrote:

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 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, I will 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.

— Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

When I read that, I thought—yes. That is exactly where I am.

The older I get, the less I feel I understand about God. I think one of the effects of aging—and hopefully of maturity too—is discovering how very little you actually know. Losing your sense of certainty. When I look back on my arrogance at younger points in my life, it makes me shake my head. Nowhere more than in parenting. I thought I had it completely figured out—I had a system, I had results, and frankly if other people just did it my way they'd have an easy time too. And then my second child came along, and everything I knew stopped working, and I had to sit with the humbling truth that I had understood very little all along.

I think faith works the same way. The ways I used to hear God's voice have changed—because I have changed, and my life circumstances have changed. And that can feel disorienting, even frightening, if we expect our experience of God to stay the same.

There is so much I don't understand. I don't understand why God heals sometimes, and other times our prayers seem to go unanswered. I don't understand why sometimes His voice feels so close, and other times there is only silence. I don't have a tidy answer for any of that.

But here is what I do know: He is worth pursuing whether I understand Him or not. He is with me regardless of how I perceive Him in any given season. And to commune with Him—to keep turning toward Him even in the not-knowing—is the highest purpose of my existence.

Merton didn't resolve his uncertainty either. He just kept walking toward God anyway, trusting that the desire to please Him was itself enough. And I think that's the invitation for all of us.