As I walked away from the parking garage, I wondered if I’d ever see my car again.

The odds of me returning to the right floor and section of the parking garage were slim, at best.

My sense of direction is so terrible, I could get lost in a paper bag.

I considered tossing my keys in the trash can, assuming I wouldn’t need them anymore.  

As a kid, it once took me an hour and a half to bike to my friend’s house two blocks away.

In fact, I never got there.

After getting turned around on countless side streets, I called it a day and biked home.

Trick-or-treating in nearby neighborhoods felt like setting sail on a long voyage.

I’d wave goodbye to my parents and hope, somehow, the wind would blow me home because I certainly didn’t know the way back.  

When I went to college in the early 2000s, my concerned parents sent me with a first-generation hand-held GPS to keep in my purse — satellite assistance to help me find my way on campus.

Well, before the iPhone was invented, this GPS was the size and weight of a brick and called out directions to me from my bag.

“Your English class is 100 feet away on your right. Your other right, Meg.”  

Hailing from a small town in Central Wisconsin, it seemed to me that cities got bigger the further south you went.

After all, Madison was directly south of my hometown, and that was a big city.

So, I reasoned, Milwaukee, an even larger city, had to be directly south of Madison.

If you kept driving south, you’d soon hit Chicago, the biggest city of them all.

Simple enough.

In fact, I continued in my geographical error even after I graduated from college, got married, and had kids.

We lived in Stoughton, a suburb north of Madison, I told someone.

My directional aptitude is most vigorously put to the test in hospitals.

When I realize I have a doctor’s appointment at a hospital instead of a smaller, more navigable clinic, my stomach sinks.  

To get to my appointment, I’ll need to take the North Bank A elevators to Floor 2 (is that two floors above ground or three? Is the lobby the ground floor or Floor 1?) which was Floor 3 before I crossed the skyway (because I parked in the wrong parking garage), to the east elevators up to Floor 5 (a different Floor 5 from the south part of the building) to the receptionist for a different department, who directs me down the hall, just two quick lefts and a right, to the correct check-in desk.

What doctor am I here to see?

I can’t remember.

I’ll see anyone who can fix my spatial reasoning.

If, by God’s grace, I got to my appointment on time, I’d need to reverse the whole process to leave the building.

I cross my fingers and hope for the best, praying there are no elevators that open on one side and then deposit me on the other, throwing off my feeble grasp of where I am in space.

I do know, though, that if I follow the sunshine, I’ll get outside eventually.

One time, my husband was waiting near the entrance of the hospital to pick me up after an appointment.

He called me.

“Where are you?”

How could I explain that I’d taken the wrong door out of the hospital, which led me to the world’s longest parking garage, followed by a tunnel, which I decided to take for some reason?

After walking for what felt like days, I finally saw an exit door.

I emerged from the concrete labyrinth to find myself in a different neighborhood. “By the zoo.”  

“How is that even possible?”

“I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Well aware of my difficulties, the Father has provided for me in abundance.

He’s blessed me with a tracking application, which keeps constant tabs on my whereabouts, sending my location to my husband’s phone.

I’m never quite where I should be, but let’s not call me lost anymore. I’m still very findable on the app.

He’s given me a husband with a keen sense of direction who understands conceptually why, for instance, I-94 West runs north, so I don’t have to.

Finally, in His infinite goodness, God has given me only one direction I ever need to remember.

No matter where I’m going, Jesus is the Way there, always.