How Can I Walk with an Idea Instead of Rushing to Understand It?

This morning, my daughter woke up early and asked to come on my walk.

While we were out, she found a brown, swirly snail—chocolate-colored, slow-moving, full of charm—and asked if she could keep it.

I told her we don’t really have the environment at home for it to thrive. She nodded, then smiled and said, “Well, I’ll just keep it until we get back to the house.”

I said, “Cool. A friend for the journey.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, they landed in a way I didn’t expect.

Some thoughts are like that snail—small, curious, and full of meaning. You don’t always know what to do with them. They’re not meant to be dissected or solved right away. They’re meant to be noticed. Carried. Walked with.

I tuck a lot of these into my Idea Mansion—a space where I collect the kinds of thoughts that don’t need conclusions yet. Just room. Sometimes they sit there for weeks, other times they surprise me by linking up with something else I’ve stored. It’s become a quiet way to honor ideas I don’t want to rush.

I do this with scripture. A verse will stand out and stay with me—not because I fully understand it, but because it feels alive. It invites me into something. Over time, it starts to unfold. Not in a rush, but in a rhythm.

Maybe that’s the key: some ideas aren’t problems to solve, but friends for the journey. And walking with them—slowly—can help us know God and ourselves more deeply than hurrying ever could.

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

Try to love the questions themselves… Don’t try to reach for the answers… Live the questions now, then, perhaps someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers.

So here’s the invitation: What thought, verse, or question might be a friend for your journey this week?