Learning to Pivot

To walk the journey of life well, you must learn to pivot.

The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.—Proverbs 16:9

As we walk through life, we will face twists and turns, along with roadblocks and barriers. When I was in my twenties, I traveled from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on a train as a part of group visiting some house churches who were meeting illegally. I was traveling with a British citizen of Hong Kong (this was when it was still a British territory). He had been arrested, tied up, and beaten for practicing his faith. When his British passport fell out of his pocket, and Chinese police let him go. To say the least, this experience was not something he had put in his planner. In fact, it messed up a significant list of things that he was aiming to do. 

This is a rather extreme example, but, nonetheless, it does illustrate that life never works as we plan. That does not make planning unimportant. In fact, having a plan for the steps you will take is helpful. Some are good planners, while others prefer to prioritize spontaneity. However, everyone has some idea of how they want the path to go. But life is not in the plan. Life is lived in the unpredictable realities that we face as we step out in our plan. 

Most of the things that we meet on the path are not as extreme as getting arrested for meeting in a house to talk about God and faith. Sometimes, it’s a hope that gets dashed, a friend that let you down, or job that is not panning out as hoped. The path is always  moving in directions that we don’t understand because no one has ever mapped out the path that you are on. We are always creating a path as we walk it.

When we were traveling back to Honk Kong, our train suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere. After about thirty minutes we learned that a landslide had covered the tracks ahead with rocks, and it would not be cleared for a few days. We got off and walked to a nearby road and the person leading our trip was able to find a person who was willing to drive us to Hong Kong. We had made our plans, but we had to pivot in order to get to our destination. 

When we face situations on the journey that don’t work out as planned, we tend to respond in one of three ways. First, we get caught up in the pressures of the moment. We are so focused on what is coming at us and what we have to get done, we end up hitting our heads against a wall repeatedly, not realizing that we need to rethink the next steps. As a result, we end up doing the same thing to attack the same problem, expecting different results. Albert Einstein famously called this common action insanity. 

The second typical response is to enter into a place of regret, to analyze how the plan we made on the path we chose did not work out. Regret traps us in the past and keeps us from seeing seeing the roadblock for what it is, a regular life experience that will be a part of any plan we make. 

A third response is to scuttle the current plan in totality because any trouble we face must mean that it was not the right plan in the first place. The expectation is that if a path is right for someone then it will work out as planned. This option mires us in the world of dreams and actually strips away our ability to keep walking. 

All three of these options fail to deal with reality. The first option ignores reality. Options two and three are forms of escaping reality, either through regret or delusion. The only way forward that fits the reality of any path we take is to pivot. This, I believe, is what it means when it says, “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.” It’s not that our plans are irrelevant. Nor does this mean that God controls every step we take. Instead, it helps us to see that God is with us as our situations that require us to rethink out plans. God is a partner who wants to work with us to figure out the pivots we need to make. 

How then do we learn to pivot? One of the best ways to do this is to develop the habit of getting on the balcony and looking at the path that you are on. Imagine that along the road of life there are places where you can perch above the path and see where you need to adjust. Here you can look back, understand where you are, and survey what might be coming. I’ve found that at these pivot perches, I am more readily aware of God’s presence. These are spaces where we can pull away and listen to God’s direction. 

It is crucial that we do this when we hit a roadblock on the path. But we can also do this in a proactive way. For instance, some do this once per week on a day off, as they look at where they have been and what lies ahead. It’s also a good practice to do this at specific points during the day. This will help you make sure that you are not merely getting pulled into the vortex of busyness and are focusing on what is really important.