Still Searching

Finding God, Finding Me

“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?”

~ Matthew 18:12 ~

What am I searching for?

Well, I’m hungry. I know that’s true. As I sit on this bench, my stomach is rumbling rather nosily, begging for attention like a toddler who wants you to hold them only because you have an ice cream cone. But “dinner” isn’t what I’m searching for. Ultimately or immediately, I suppose. No, it’s something more. Something deeper.

I’ve been searching for much of my life. Looking for something. Always. Yet never with clear direction. Never quite certain of the target.

As a child, I remember trying to piece together whatever unseen puzzle I assumed was scattered throughout my small world. Always trying to reconstruct a disbanded mosaic containing a breathtaking portrait that, when beheld, would satisfy my insatiable craving.

I searched the faces of each adult, peering deep into their eyes, certain they knew what I sought, just didn’t know how to fully translate its divine wonder. I was convinced, though, that, one day, the grown-ups would uncover the Rosetta Stone essential to complete my search. Mainly because I believed in them. Their goodness. I believed adults weren’t as cruel as children. I was certain their kind had outgrown the struggles of sharing. Confident they were nothing like the arrogant and the arid encountered on the playground at recess. Convinced they could guide me to whatever treasure I was searching for.

In eighth grade, I wasn’t receiving much playing time on my school’s basketball team. A tragedy to thirteen-year-old me whose world was consumed with the minute, ensconced with self, and enslaved to the search.

I loved the challenge inherent in sports. The competition with myself and with others. I loved the pain after a physical game, be it basketball, soccer, or backyard football. There was something in the struggle, the tension between collective effort and individual prowess, that I craved. That I loved. That I obsessed over.

But sports betrayed me. My passion outpaced my body—my physical ability limited by a sub-five-foot frame.

One day after practice, I mustered the courage to march into my coach’s office with a confidence draped awkwardly on my slight shoulders.

“Coach?” I cracked.

“What?!” he squawked.

“Um, I was, uh, wondering…” I stammered.

“Yeah?!” he hurried.

“I, uh, I was wondering, um, what I, what I could work on to maybe, um, to work on to get, uh, some more, um, you know, some more playing time?”

I don’t remember seeing his eyes roll, but I do remember hearing them.

“Ha!” he started. “Well, for starters, you could grow six inches.”

The room seemed to shrink. The walls pressed in and the temperature rose, blossoming beads of sweat on my brow. I’m certain he said more. But all I can remember is littered laughter and a flippant comment about me hanging upside down by my toes to elongate my 4’11” frame.

With all my might, I blinked away the tears blurring my vision. I don’t even know if I responded, I just remember leaving the gym, arriving home, racing to my room, burying my face in my pillow, and weeping on my bed for what must’ve been the rest of my middle school basketball career.

I can still taste that pain. I can still feel her contours, her curves, her seductive suggestion to wallow, even if only a little longer, in the self-pity and self-loathing that seem more real than the phantoms of pleasure and victory I’d clutched before or anytime thereafter. After a while, though, feeling-sorry-for-myself wore off, and the search for whatever unfolded further.

All throughout high school, theater, musicals and one-act plays filled the void left by my troll of a basketball coach. I memorized script after script in search of something.

For me, the stage offered an intoxication unlike any other extracurricular activity. On stage, I could be someone different. Different clothes, different accent, different gait. Just different. Altogether and all-consuming. On stage, I explored emotions that, far too often, cowered beneath my surface like a roach scurrying away at the slight movement of an unsuspecting patron. Emotions I didn’t know I had or wasn’t aware I was allowed to have unfurled with tantalizing freedom, inviting me on enchanting explorations.

Anger was my favorite. I found it comforting in a way. Maybe that’s twisted. But it was soothing all the same. A therapy beyond words to put on the mask of another whose emotions matched my own—at least those buried six feet beneath my smile.

At times, I felt like I needed to thank the character. Like I owed a debt to the script that allowed me to be more of me than most days afford. More like me than most can tolerate. To thank the character for allowing me to explore, to search, to find me amidst the fragments that most of my friends and family labelled “Shane.” The character encouraged my search by revealing the me beneath the accomplishments and accolades that conceal more than they celebrate.

I’m older now. But not much has changed. Or so it seems. Sure, the modes are different, but the motivation seems oddly familiar. Possibly even the same.

As an adult, I amass diplomas and degrees like I once collected baseball cards, gathering them and then forgetting them in a box in the attic. A collision of value and cheap reward. Accomplishment and “who-even-cares.” As an adult, I teach classes, preach sermons, and travel to cities to write books and posts for my substack, tirelessly articulating mysteries that elude words, that mock my attempts, that remind me of the portrait I crayoned with pride until my teacher gave me a low grade because I didn’t keep my color inside the lines.

Something stirs, I strive, and end where I began: still searching.

Desperately. For something. I just don’t know what.

Maybe I’m just angsty today. Or maybe it’s just this location that stirs something within me. I’m sitting on a bench outside the Quincy market in the heart of Boston mere paces away from the infamous massacre and the meeting place that birthed the timeless tea party. Protests that shaped history, testifying to their own search. Their own pursuit of freedom, liberty, or something they too couldn’t quite articulate.

Shoot, maybe it’s just the below freezing temperatures that keep causing me to put on and take off my gloves, wrestling between how much I want to keep writing and how much cold my fingers can truly tolerate. My index fingers are actually numb right now. Which might be more of an insight than an obstacle.

I mean, maybe I’m searching for ways to simply go numb. Ways to escape a pain no one prepared me for. Most pursue a form of paralysis, after all, so why not me?

But even as I finished that last line, I knew it wasn’t true. It just feels off. Somehow forced. Kind of like convincing myself I ought to say the answer is “God.” I’m searching for God. Which I’m sure, on some level, is always true. Is always the true source of my desire and longing, for he is Desire itself. But if I’m honest, even that bible-based answer doesn’t settle the stirring within.

Then again, maybe that’s the point.

Maybe what I’m searching for is searching itself. The journey “toward” always transforms the one brave enough to journey at all. The adventure “after” always unveils treasures of self and revelations of God unfit for those fettered to lounging and laziness. Epic tales intrigue each generation. From campfires to classrooms, from plays to pulpits, the perils of pursuit enshrine heroines into our collective memories and heroes into our wayward hearts. For every exploration offers some insight, some bounty, some discovery of God and of self. Maybe what I’m searching for, then, is searching itself.

Or maybe I’m just hungry. I did miss dinner.

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