A Lost Boy (or girl)

In the movie, Hook, there is a scene that makes me cry. Every time. Not just a tear or two with a little sniffle. I am talking mascara stains, guttural sobs coupled with a runny faucet nose. Let me set the scene for you. Peter Pan has grown up and been away from Neverland for so long that he has forgotten he was ever Pan to begin with. He has to return to Neverland to rescue his 2 children who have been kidnapped by Captain Hook. He finds the Lost Boys but he doesn’t recognize them. Nor do they recognize him. They are like strangers even though they grew up together, spent all their time together and loved each other for years and years. Too much time had gone by. Too much focus on other things. Life had happened and they forgot what each other looked like.

So, in order to get his kids back Peter Pan needs to get into shape and be fight ready. And to do that he needs the Lost Boys’ help. They don’t want to help because they feel the only one who can really rescue the kids is Peter Pan. They simply don’t realize that Peter is standing right in front of them. Tinkerbell, however, knows that it is Peter. She breezily floats through the air, landing among the Lost Boys, and begs them to believe her that this unrecognizable grown man truly is their leader. The one they follow. He is Pan the Man. The boys stubbornly refuse to listen to Tink… until one smaller, angelic boy moves closer to Peter. He looks inquisitively at his eyes. He examines his mouth. He stares at him with a longing glaze, wanting badly to see what Tinkerbell sees.

Then he tentatively lifts his hands up to Peter’s face, places them gently on his cheeks and begins to slowly squish, mash, stretch, and smooth the skin. He pushes back the wrinkled, weathered skin. He stretches his mouth so much that it ends in a funny smile-like position. He pulls up the burrowed brow. Suddenly, the sweet boy’s eyes light up and he beams the most brilliant smile and exclaims with delight, “OOOOOH, THEEEEERE YOU ARE PETER!!”. He recognized him. He knew him. He had let years go by without seeing the face of his leader and friend. When he rediscovered him he was a bit relieved and absolutely jubilant. 

This same thing happens to us all the time as well. No, not seeing Peter Pan our childhood friend again! Do you think I am nuts or what? I am talking about God. 

I know I can’t be alone in this. Time goes by, sometimes it is days and other it is months or years, and I don’t feel God with me. I get busy with work, parenting responsibilities, house work, volunteering, watching tv, and if I am honest, scrolling social media way too much. And I don’t see God in any of it. I don’t easily see His face anymore. These are times when I feel like I have been gone from Neverland (or heaven on earth) for too long and I have forgotten what my God looks like. 

But if we become like the little Lost Boy we can find Him again. We need to be willing to have hope that He has not left. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit as it floats in and nudges us gently. We need to believe the Holy whisper of the Spirit. We need to be inclined to push back the barriers that life has assembled. We need to intentionally pull up the curtain that is blocking our view. We need to be open to seeing what is truly there even if it looks different from what we remember. We need to set aside our own perceptions and accept what is standing right in front of us. God shows us Himself daily in the small little moments. God displays Himself to us in tangible ways more often than we think. God reveals Himself to us at the precise minute we need Him. When this happens to me I almost always say, inwardly or sometimes awkwardly out loud, “OOOOOH THEEEEEERE YOU ARE GOD!”. 

I think that we all have been like the Lost Boys many times in our lives. Days, months or even years go by without seeing God and it feels nearly impossible to find Him in our lives. Maybe you are there right now. Maybe you are wondering if He will show up for you or not. Maybe you feel Him close but are desperate to have Him reach out and guide you, hug you or lead you. Maybe you are in the midst of darkness and just want a small flicker of light to help show you the way out. Maybe you are walking in bright light and are soaking up every teeny bit of tangible radiance you can get. So whether you have forgotten what God looks like or you can’t get enough of his face I hope that by me sharing stories from my life that it will help you to find ways to open your eyes to the moments where He undoubtedly is but that you would have usually overlooked. 

It’s funny how we don’t notice things until we focus on them. Have you ever realized that you drive around town for years and years and until you are in the process of car shopping you never, ever see the kind of car you are eyeing? You suddenly see a GMC Envoy everywhere you turn! Have you ever noted that until you have a certain ailment you have never heard of anyone else with it before? It is crazy how many people have had a labral tear (what the heck is a labral anyway?!)! Who knew? And how about this creepiness of seeing ads on Facebook or Amazon for tweezers for days after you Googled “best tweezers to grasp pesky chin hair”?! In this case it is an algorithm but in real life it has a name. It’s called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, otherwise known as a frequency illusion or recency illusion. 

Your brain is an extraordinarily powerful thing. When Baader-Meinhof kicks in one part of your brain subconsciously makes note of what another part of your brain is focusing on and then looks for that thing in other places. Now that you are looking for it, you find it. What a beautiful ability that God gave our brains! I am 83.2% sure that He didn’t mean for it to be used in car shopping though. It is more likely, in my mind, that he wired our brains to see more of Him when we are focusing on Him. 

As I share some “Oh, there you are God” stories with you I am praying that your magnificent mind is focused on them and then you start discovering your own “Oh, there you are God” stories! And then maybe, just maybe, you will share this idea with others…. Would it be amazing if we could start a viral mind movement of being mindful of the gracious goodness of the presence of God in our daily lives?! Let’s move forward in this together. Let’s acknowledge our God sightings. Let’s celebrate other people’s Holy Spirit glimpses. Now dear sweet reader, let’s push back the wrinkles of our every day life and, with joy, see the face of God again!