Enjoying the journey

He said angrily “Lucy love is a process not an event!”

This was a statement that my then (soon to graduate from med school) boyfriend said to me when we were having a fight over the phone.

Angry or not, he made a serious point which, years later has made a lot of sense to me than it did back then.

I was young, naïve and clueless. I knew nothing about love and to be honest nothing about life. But what 20 year old does?

Who does he think he is? He doesn’t deserve me! That’s what my 20 year old brain was thinking. I was not at all pleased that he wouldn’t adjust his beliefs to mine (yep I was miss smarty pants).

Fast forward to a few years later I now know, no! I thoroughly comprehend love is a journey, not an event.

Just like life ….a journey, with different phases.

I live in a country that doesn’t have many beaches. In fact the only place you will see a beach is at the coast, so when you finally get to travel to the coast, to most people(yours truly included) it’s one of the highlight of life especially when you are young and in college.

We plan, we save, and we lie to our parents just to achieve this dream. I can remember the countless times that friends and I planned this. Which never did happen maybe because we lied and fleeced our parents, (there really is such a thing as karma).

Finally, I got my chance to travel to the coast by bus(no I didn’t con my folks this time) and it was a long but most enjoyable journey, one because of the company, two because of the breathtaking scenery.

In life like travelling to the coast, many parts make up the journey; breathtaking sights, delays, the not so pleasant company that we did not necessarily choose for our selves, the not so thrilling parts that we would rather skip through, the list is endless.

 Some parts of this journey tend to be clearer. We can see our surroundings, and ourselves. Here we know where we are, we have clarity about the journey. We all love this part, when everything is enjoyable, and the goodness of the Lord is all around us. In this part, it’s easy to celebrate. It’s so easy to praise God.

There is the part of total darkness where we can hardly see ourselves leave alone the person next to us, scary times! When travelling by bus we have full assurance that the driver knows what he is doing. We put our faith that even though it’s dark and we can’t see the way. He will drive us through it.

 In life, we too can have confidence in the one in control.  We learn to walk by faith believing that we are still on course even when we cannot see it. We put our hands in the hand of God, and we allow him to guide us through to the light again.

 Then there’s the ordinary phase, when everything is just plain and lacking, our surroundings are not exciting and we can barely find our joy. We tend to ask questions in this place. We tend to wonder if there’s something, we have done or not done to be at this place. We cry, we kick, we scream .we live for the day when we can finally leave this place and get to the next part of the journey.

Anywhere else but here!

                                         

                                            *The little boy's story*

I heard a story of a boy. One day a fairy visited him. She brought him a gift. a ball with a little string on it and she told him that whenever he found himself at a place in life he didn’t like, all he had to do was pull the string and he would fast forward  to the next part of his life .

Years later the boy had now grown into an old man .The fairy returned to him and asked him if there was one thing he could do differently?

 He answered," I only wish I could go back and suffer slowly."

You see every time that he found himself in an uncomfortable, slow or painful place in life he would pull the string and skip that part.

Wouldn’t we all like to be able to fast forward life to the good parts and skip all the hard parts? I know I would.

However, here is the thing. Every part of our lives has a purpose and most of the time we hardly learn anything in the easy, exciting, fun parts of life. The most important lessons are in the hard, painful not so fun parts.

As Christians it’s here that we learn what it means to have true joy, to be patient ,to be faithful even when we don’t feel like ,to be peaceful like Jesus in the storm , to love the people who make it amazingly hard to love (I call these the extra grace required types ) . sometimes am one of these, sometimes you are too. its in this phase we learn what it truly means to put our trust and confidence in God.

This is the place where we really get to look at ourselves and evaluate our thinking, our attitudes and our motives. And do the necessary re-adjustments. 

 We see a God who shows up when no one else does.We now don’t just see Him as the God of the Breakthroughs or of the mountain top experiences. We now see him as God of patient endurance, of hope, of faith that is so immovable that now mountains have no choice but to move.

Can you then imagine skipping all these parts? I cant .

We may not enjoy this part most of the days; days we won’t even pretend to like it here.  Sure there will be days we’ll just be enduring rather than celebrating.  And we should celebrate not because it’s hard but because we know God is up to something! Still there days we’ll have such joy that the people around us will know it can only be Christ’s joy. Days where we praise even when we don’t feel like simply because we know who He is in comparison to our situation.

What if we choose to go through the hard parts and not resent them? What if we choose to suffer slowly? Then maybe just maybe they wouldn’t last as long. And not because they have been shortened but because we have a different perspective. Now we are not looking at where we are. We are looking at who is with us. Eyes so firmly fixed on Him that we look around and suddenly we are on the next part of our journey.

When we start to see it differently, every part of the journey becomes a place of new experiences. We do not lose ourselves in the laid back, exciting, very much pleasurable parts because we now understand there are a reason and a purpose for it. We don’t despise the hard, painful and oh so slow parts because we now choose see them as seasons of learning and growing disguised as challenges.

Finally, we come to the realization that the journey is as important as the destination maybe even more imperative. Now we are not rushing through life to the finish line. We find things to celebrate in every part. Yes, we celebrate the people who walked with us; even those who left us because we know everybody can’t come with us.

We made some mistakes; acquired some invaluable skills in the same step, fell a few times but in the process found out how to crawl when we couldn’t walk. We paused to enjoy the small wins as well as the big wins. We grew in character and in faith.

A wise person once said, “The danger of living in the future or in the past is that we miss the opportunity to enjoy today.”

Yes we carry all the good memories in our mind , we also live in the hope of tomorrow its not bad the problem is forgetting to live today.

Make a choice to live in the now, and not stuck in the victories and excitements of yesterday, nor in the dreams of tomorrow.

Here is to making the choice to enjoy the journey!