One Sunday, several months ago,

I missed my exit.

I was so lost in thought, running through that morning’s sermon in my head, that I drove right past my exit on I-70.

I was already running late, and the next exit where I could turn around?

About 15 miles up the road.

That made me half an hour late. I just barely made the service. Yikes!

Stuff like this happens to me all the time.

Now I don’t think, at the age of 42, I’m being plagued by “senior moments” yet.  Honestly, I’ve been doing spacey things like this since I was a little kid.

I think the term for my condition is: Absent Minded.

Yep, that’s me.

I’ll “zone out” in a middle of a conversation because something somebody said sends me down a mental rabbit hole.

I’ll walk into a room and have no idea why I’ve gone there.

I’ll spend more time pondering how to do something than actually doing it.

It’s true: Sometimes my mind has a mind of its own.

I think it began when I was a child. I never felt perfectly comfortable in my environment, so I developed a rich interior world.  My imagination became a comforting place for me, a creative alternative to the boredom or uncertainty of the physical world.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more aware of the strange dual-residence  in which I live. Sometimes I live here, in the world of jobs and schedules and people and problems, and other times I go wandering inside my own brain, into the world of ideas and dreaming and endless possibilities.

I wish the two parts of my life could better live in harmony.

Psalm 139 has this important reminder:

¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.

God is a part of both sides of my life.  In fact, God made me to be integrated, so that my inner thoughts and my external path are created to work together.

When I am absent minded, it means I have not integrated my life the way God wants me to.

So, is it possible?

Is it possible to live focussed both inward and outward?

I think so. I’m gonna work on that.

But my recent Sunday morning side trip reminds me…

trying to be present and  absent?

That’s unimaginable.

Have a great week,

Mitch