I often rely on some kind of navigation tool when I’m going to new places, and even sometimes when I’m going to familiar places. As I neared my destination during recent travel, my friendly GPS app directed me down a road that was barricaded. Despite what my device may have believed about the route, I had to find a different way. (I suppose I could have just driven through the barricades, but that seemed like bad form.)
While I turned around and tried different streets, I left the GPS on, hoping that eventually it would realize that I wasn’t going to take the road it most wanted me to take. For several blocks, though, it kept trying to direct me back to the barricaded road—the route it believed was the surest way to my destination. The route it trusted most, perhaps. Or the route with which it was most familiar.
With some confidence that there was an unbarricaded path to the place I was staying, I ignored the enthusiastic directions of my device, and before long it had adjusted to my commitment to avoid the blocked road. I got where I was going, just by a different route than I initially thought would get me there.
This summer, we’ve been exploring our first formations and the protective promises that we made to ourselves—sacred vows we made before we even knew what we were doing—to keep ourselves safe and get our needs met. Those protective promises often become like barricades in our path.
As a reminder, these protective promises are those commitments like I must always ______ or I will never ______ that are always influencing how we show up, even though we aren’t consciously thinking them. The habitual ways we’ve learned to be that just run on autopilot in our day to day lives. We hopefully get glimpses of these promises when we reflect on moments when we’ve shown up in ways that don’t fully align with our values, or moments when we reacted defensively. When we feel disconnected rather than connected—from other people or the divine or our own inner wisdom—that disconnection is probably a place where our protective promises are creating a barricade.
They served a good purpose at some point in time, but now they keep us from getting where we most want to go. And when I say, “where we most want to go,” what I really mean is: Our protective promises keep us from living in alignment with our values.
If we take a moment to reflect on what wholeness or shalom would be like in our lives or in the world around us, most of us can clearly envision something about that destination. We might not know every detail about that destination, but we know something about how we would show up if we were fully committed to embodying our values.
But our familiar ways of showing up don’t get us there. The things that have become autopilot for us—habitual ways we stay safe and try to get our needs met—those things keep us behind barricades. It feels safe and protected, but we can’t stay behind the barricades and also journey toward wholeness. A different path can offer us fullness of life and a deeper sense of connection with other people, with the divine, and with ourselves. To me, that’s an inspiring destination.
What do you need in order to recalibrate your Internal Guidance System toward that “true north” of your life-affirming values? What barricades do you need to navigate around to more consistently show up with integrity to those values? And if it doesn’t feel safe to ignore those internal barricades, how real are the threats your protective promises are keeping you safe from?
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