“He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 10:39). I don't believe that this statement is intended to imply that we must lose our life in some deliberate act of sacrifice, like our life was some prized possession that we cast onto the altar to be burnt up. Rather, I believe that what the Savior is encouraging us to do is live our life with enough faith and courage that we run the very real risk of getting lost along the way. I saw a post on social media that I can't quote exactly or give proper credit or citation, but it was something like, people often refer to baby steps when they take small, measured, careful steps forward, but this is not actually at all how a baby takes its first steps. A baby's steps are incautious, unsteady, enthusiastic lurches into the unknown. Life is a big mess under the best of circumstances and if we try to live with even an ounce of passion, we will end up getting lost over and over and over. But that's OK. Getting lost is part of the plan. Christ is not some harried hall monitor who grinds His teeth and resentfully plucks us out of whatever fresh hell we've landed ourselves in and drags us back to home room and tells us to be good little boys and girls and not wander off again or we'll be sorry. From Christ's perspective, we're all in one big game of hide and seek and He's it and He can't wait to come look for us and see where we've gotten lost this time. But if we just sit on the side of the playground with our hands thrust in our pockets and our eyes on our shoes, all because we don't want to get sweaty or sticky or stuck in some hiding place that was a little outside of our comfort zone, then we are going to miss out on the game. We are going to miss out on the joy that comes from being found again by the Master Seeker. I hope we can all start to let go of the perfect version of what our life was supposed to be and just go out and live life with abandon, knowing that sometimes in our exuberance we are going to get lost, but knowing just as surely that however lost we get, we will always be found once more.
