The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
Navigating the Wilderness Within: When Your Life Map Fails You
What happens when the map you’ve been following leads you astray?
This meditation explores the unsettling experience of being lost not just physically, but on a much deeper level: spiritually and emotionally. We confront that quiet, creeping realization that despite all our efforts, we’ve been heading in the wrong direction.
For much of our lives, we rely on mental maps shaped by external forces family expectations, societal norms, our own wounds and triumphs. These maps help us navigate relationships, success, purpose, and identity. But what happens when we discover these maps contain fundamental flaws? The shame, the fear, the temptation to deny our own missteps these forces can trap us, keeping us from acknowledging the truth.
There’s a distinct parallel between being lost and being deceived by others. Both involve a distortion of reality that often remains unnoticed until the truth insists on breaking through. Yet within this painful awakening lies an extraordinary gift. Like the shepherd who abandons ninety-nine sheep to find the one, we come to see that nothing in our journey is truly wasted. Even the detours and disappointments those moments of feeling lost become the very wisdom that guides us forward.
This is the first in a series of spoken journal entries that will invite you to slow down, sit with your thoughts, and wrestle with profound questions. The questions here are not meant to be answered in an instant. They are meant to settle into your soul, to shift something inside you over time.
Three questions to meditate on this week:
- Who will you trust to lead you home when you can no longer trust yourself?
- Will you still choose truth when it costs you everything?
- When life collapses, will you rebuild what was—or dare to become someone new?
Listen deeply. Reflect. And return to these questions as the week unfolds. They are not mere thoughts to consume, but invitations to transform.
#SpiritualJourney
#SelfDiscovery
#TruthAndTransformation
#DeeperQuestions
#SelfReflection
#CSLewis
#FaithAndWisdom
#LifePurpose
#PersonalGrowth
#MeditationOnTruth
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Subscribe, leave review, and follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
You know, when they say I'm lost, a lot of us picture being in the woods and there's this moment, like a lightning strike, where you finally have to admit I actually don't know where I am and sometimes it'll just creep up on you Like a low-level unease. Then suddenly it hits you low-level unease. Then suddenly it hits you Other times. You just look around, you realize I have no idea where I am. There's another kind of being lost, the kind where you don't know you're lost because you believe that you're doing the right thing, you're chasing what matters. You're chasing what matters and you're walking the path you thought you were supposed to. We build these maps of being where we're supposed to and doing the right thing from our families and from our mentors, the culture. We're supplanted in our pain, our pain. They teach us how to navigate relationships, Success, money, sex, purpose, and we trust the map, not realizing. It's a patchwork of good advice, bad inputs, trauma, assumptions and blind spots. Then one day it hits I'm not where I thought I was supposed to be. That's when the fear starts to set in the shame, Because the deeper you get and the harder it is to admit you've been going the wrong way.
Speaker 1:Sometimes self-deception can kick in to uphold the reality. You start faking it. You tell yourself it's fine, it's all fine, but it's not. And eventually reality crashes through, the whole illusion collapses and everything you've built on that warped foundation crumbles with it. Deception feels like this too. When somebody lies to you. It doesn't always feel wrong at first, because your brain is filtering it through what you know and what you think you know, and the liar grabs the fabric of reality and twists it just a little bit. So now you're looking at the world through a distorted lens and you don't even realize it. But time, time is relentless and over time the truth has a way of breaking through. Over time, the truth has a way of breaking through. You look back and wonder how did I not see it? How did I let it go on this long? And even when you understand the steps that got you here, it doesn't always ease the pain.
Speaker 1:And here's the part that really breaks people the feeling that everything they went through was a waste the lost years, the missed chances, the money that was given up, the relationships that never happened, the damage done. But it's not wasted. That's what the story of the good shepherd tells us that someone, someone, is willing to come and get you, not just to shout directions from a distance, not just a judge, but to leave the 99 to find you. Now, by typical standards, that's not actually a good shepherd leaving the 99 at the risk for one, but that one sheep for that sheep, that's the best shepherd in the world. And maybe that's the whole point, because nothing is wasted.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's loss, yes, there was a cost, but you can't do everything at once, and so choices were made, sacrifices were made, but what you carry from that time, it becomes part of the journey. You learn things, you gained a kind of wisdom. Jesus said be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And now you know how the serpents move. Snakes are ambush predators. They mimic the environment they live in and they learn the patterns of their prey. And they wait, camouflaged, waiting to strike. Some even have lures on their tails. There's a viper that tries to get birds and a little spider appendages on its tail and to bait these unsuspecting birds. Once you've been bitten, once you've seen the pattern, you know what to watch for. That's wisdom. So no, it's not wasted.
Speaker 1:The betrayal isn't a detour, it's part of the road, and when you realize you're lost, the fastest way forward is honesty. Admit it. Go back to the last place you knew where you were at. Then move forward again, carrying everything that you've learned. Then move forward again, carrying everything that you've learned, because God has this way, this mysterious, powerful way of turning what was meant to harm us into something good, of taking death and somehow bringing life out of it, of making beauty from a burned down house and the ashes that remain, and gathering the shattered dreams of lost sheep and piecing them into something you'd never have thought to ask for a mosaic. That only makes sense once it's complete in the whole scope of your life. And so I'll leave you with these three questions If you cannot trust yourself to know when you are lost, who will you trust to lead you home? If the truth costs you everything that you have built, will you still call that truth good? When the life you made collapses, will you seek to rebuild it or finally dare to become someone new? So, yeah, this is a little different From time to time.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be dropping these shorter reflections. It's kind of a spoken journal, devotional meditation, not really a space filler or something for passive listening, but something to actually cut through the noise as we're just pounding content on the six-inch screen that we put in front of our face. This is meant to be marinated in, consumed slowly, in the quiet corners of your day no background noise, not multitasking, and something that you come back to so obviously you know. Listen to it more than once and let it hit different throughout your week, because it's going to feel a little bit different on a Monday versus a Friday and let it interrupt you in a good way. So every one of these is going to end with some questions.
Speaker 1:This one ends with three questions, not answers, but questions the kind that make you feel a bit uneasy. They demand honesty and because if we don't ask what's really going on inside of us, we'll just go about our day, keep scrolling and lose hours and hours and hours again on that six-inch screen. And so if something stirred in you, don't brush it off. Sit with it, let it work on you. And these moments of reflection aren't a throwaway. They're something that's meant to be transformative, and what's starting is going to take some time to finish. So more of these are coming. They'll be short, they'll be sharp, they'll be honest, but tune in and be Some. More of these are coming. They'll be short, they'll be sharp, they'll be honest, but tune in for me expecting more of these kind of devotionals. All right, guys, cheers.
