No Roadmap

Or “How to turn uncertainty into meaning”

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A storm is coming. Cold. Sharp. Icy rain, maybe snow. Temperatures at dangerous levels. It’s going to slow us down. It’s going to give us some grief. Plans are getting disrupted, and there is that little, lingering fear that something could go catastrophically wrong.

As a novelist, I’m highly trained to look for deeper meaning in the world around me. What is the metaphor, in this event? In this circumstance? And how does it relate to the deeper story of who we are as a culture, who I am as a man or husband or writer?

And when I look at this storm and then turn inward to see where its threads connect to my own heart and soul, it all tendrils and entwines with the feeling of uncertainty within me.

That one, that spike of dread and anxiety, has been embedded in my heart for some time now. Years.

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So, the storm is that. The ice and the wind. The rain and the sleet and the snow. Slippery, dangerous roads. Biting cold. It feels just like this uncertainty I carry within. Ice without, bitter chill inside.

Kara and I put in the hard work a couple of days ago, with me climbing into the attic above the garage and lowering down the pieces of an industrial shelving system I had stored up there. When I took it down—from when it was set up in our garage—and painstakingly carried it up the rickety steps into the attic, I had thought at the time that it would be many years before I had to bring it back down again. I didn’t think or realize at the time that it would be mere months later that I’d have to deal with it again.

Months after breaking those shelves down and storing them, I now found myself rebuilding them in a storage unit. Readying them for service once again. Their original purpose, actually. The one I thought was done, but turns out… no.

Store what we own. What little we have left, after selling everything. Give us a way to get all of it out of the way. So that we can empty the house. So that we can put the house on the market.

This wasn’t the plan for a long time. It became the plan when we realized it was the only option left.

There are a lot of reasons for this, most of which are too personal to dive into. Not here. Not now. I’ve hinted at and flat-out talked about some of it, but the idea of writing it all out in one place feels like something I don’t want—like a play for sympathy, or something similar. Or maybe it’s just that some of it hurts too much.

Let’s say, just to give us some ground to stand on, that Kara and I have been waiting on something promised, going on three years now, that keeps getting moved out. We made some decisions and choices, based on that promise. We took some risks. And those decisions, and choices, and risks… I still believe they’ll pay off.

But until then, we wait.

The future is uncertain.

I don’t know what life is going to look like for us, a year from now. Or a month from now. Or tomorrow.

It’s that unwritten. It’s that loosely defined.

Even the plans we make, and try to implement, have an absolute element of uncertainty in them. Because we don’t actually know what we can count on. Well… there is one thing. One being. I know I can count on God.

The thing is, God’s plans, His ways, His thoughts… they’re different from mine. They’re unknowable. Which feels like more uncertainty.

But what it really is, I now realize, is the nature of trust.

It isn’t trust, if you know with certainty. Right? Isn’t that truth? If I have guarantees of a specific outcome, then I don’t have to have trust at all, do I?

Or maybe that is faith, too. I know the stool I’m sitting on is going to keep holding me, right? No… actually… I don’t. I’ve sat in chairs that have collapsed under me before. Spectacular crashes. Lots of laughter.

And yet, here I am sitting. Here I am trusting, even with that uncertainty. I can’t know the outcome. I can’t know where things are going. And I trust anyway.

That’s how we live.

The alternative is to quit. To give up. To find the safest corner to curl up in so we can eventually succumb to hunger or this bitter cold that’s coming.

That’s no way to live. It’s the opposite, in fact. It is how we die, without having lived at all.

I don’t have a roadmap. I don’t know where we are going. We have hope in small things, but we have to acknowledge and accept, none of that may happen.

So all I can do, all I can ever do, is trust that God has a plan, that He loves me enough to put me on the right path, and that everything will always work out, for my good and His glory.

That’s the best roadmap I can come up with.

Cold comfort? Sometimes. I can’t tell you how often I have gnashed my teeth and shook my fists, crying and screaming and begging God to do something. “If not save me, then end me!”

Thankfully, God has His own plans, and doesn’t necessarily need my take. Doesn’t necessarily need to take direction from me.

I live.

I will keep living.

And, roadmap or not, I’ll stick to the journey. The right paths that God has prepared for me, for His glory and His Namesake.

And I think this is a reason for it all, and I think that part of that reason is this: I can understand the suffering of others, because I have suffered. And that mirror reflects me. I can have sympathy, because of that. I can have empathy, because of that. And I can offer what pittance of wisdom I may possess, what tiny tendril of understanding I have, what speck of grace I can provide. I can love. And loving, I can help. Even if it isn’t enough.

No roadmap for us, good friends. No assurance of what lies ahead. Only the fog of war and mists of time.

But let us agree, that we are all on the journey together.

I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL…

…if you bought one or more of my novels.

And I am writing new novels. It’s hard, at the moment. And I am not producing as fast as I once did. But what I am writing now is coming from a new place in my soul, and I think you’ll love it. Different, by far, from anything you’re going to find in my current catalog. But I am proud of all of my work, regardless. And I hope and pray and believe it will provide you with joy.

Find my books at https://kevintumlinson.com/books

A NOTE AT THE END

Sometimes people tell me that I share too much. I always have. I’ve always been quick to offer my opinions and perspective and hot takes, for sure. Often to the detriment of everyone, since I can be very forceful in my opinions.

I’m working on that. Especially lately. We have enough opinions. I think I should offer mine only if asked for them—explicitly or implicitly, but also exclusively.

This Substack is an example of implicit asking. So are the videos I create. The podcasts. All of that content. It is me answering an implicit call. Because if you consume it, you have asked for it, even if after the fact.

But I want to overcome my tendency to interject my attitudes and opinions where they have never been asked for. I think that even if I am right, sometimes all I am creating with my rightness is strife and heartache and division. I’m against that.

But here, on the page, on the screen, where I am creating whole cloth rather than jotting on sticky notes of social media posts or comments, I will take the extreme liberty of assuming that if you are here to read it, you are asking for it. You want to know what I have to say. Enough that you will read and comment on my sometimes lengthy posts. And you will share the content I create. And you will follow me on this journey—the same journey you’re on.

I’m going to assume that we are walking companions. Even if we do not know where we are going.

You are not alone.