EXCERPT
FROM CHAPTER 1
LIFE AS A JOURNEY
So we encounter somewhere along the way this rite of passage, this
right-sizing of expectation about life. You have probably discovered
some of the same realities I have—that marriages and close relationships
require a world of give and take, that your children have challenges
even the best mother can’t remedy. Perhaps you have been blindsided by a
couple of stinging losses you didn’t see coming—or felt like a character
in a play who suddenly finds herself saying someone else’s lines, as
though you were reading from the wrong script and this experience could
not be part of your life. But it is.
Hardly any of us travel very far without encountering
at least one huge disappointment. One blot of black paint on an
otherwise charming canvas. One obstacle in our path that simply refuses
to yield. I used to think this was just my experience in life. And then
I started to pay closer attention. No one comes through unscathed. And
those who appear to do so are usually just better pretenders.
Life is uncertain. Coming to grips with that
uncertainty, in the deep places of your heart, is like breaking through
a sound barrier—or waking up after a long, long nap. It’s like a
conversation I had with a woman trying to decide whether to marry a man
she’d waited years to meet.
Her story was this. Her clearest memories of childhood
were the hours she spent by the bed of her father as he died a slow, sad
death from Lou Gehrig’s disease. In her little-girl mind, she thought
that with her presence and her help, he would get better. At least she
could bring him a few moments of joy. And so she sat there
dutifully—hour after hour, month after month until he died.
She had grown into a compassionate woman in her
thirties, with a depth and gentleness that made her a superb nurse. And
finally— finally—she’d met a man who felt worth the wait. She was all
set to marry him. Only, in a particular twist of irony, this man was
battling an illness as well. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was
chronic. And it was way too close to home for her.
Her heart wanted to move forward in the relationship,
but her head searched for some assurance that she would not be sitting
by another man’s bedside down the road. “I want to know that I won’t
repeat that earlier pain,” she admitted, understandably.
I know you do,
I thought. Oh, for a few guarantees. I wished like crazy I could offer
her some. But our conversations were more about making peace with the
terms of this planet—that there are precious few guarantees about the
things that matter most. God is the only certainty. So if my future
holds some repeat of my past (which is sometimes the case), then what I
know is that he will be there. Jesus will still be there. And my experience of his love and care in those moments
is what will make for a new chapter and not an old bad dream. It’s an
incredible dance of trust.
Do you remember when you first really understood how
fragile life is? Do you recall what was happening in your life when you
realized that God did not promise some sort of immunity from pain—and he
didn’t provide a protective coating so you wouldn’t actually feel it?
That there aren’t any guarantees? For each of us, life holds a few
Humpty Dumpty experiences where it feels like all the king’s horses and
all the king’s men couldn’t put this thing together again. And God
eventually takes those broken pieces and fashions something far better
than anything we could even think to dream.
I want to suggest that it’s just these places in your
experience—where dreams and expectations don’t work out—that you are
being issued the invitation of your life. Disappointment is, strangely
enough, a doorway to the real adventure. It’s the point where you start
to leave behind notions of how your story should read—and enter your
relationship with God as a journey. A true journey, one that’s wild and
adventurous and not anywhere close to predictable.
When I lived in Colorado Springs, years ago, I remember
one of Brent Curtis’s offhand comments, spoken in a casual moment of
reflection before he wrote The Sacred Romance. “I feel like I am just
beginning to know God,” he said. And I thought, That’s a strange thing
to say, Brent. You’ve been a Christian for years.
I realize now that Brent was speaking of this thing of
journey—a kind of emotional conversion that comes as you stop living on
the edge of straining to get God to do what you have in mind. The
freedom to actually be on an adventure with God becomes strangely
possible when you aren’t pushing so hard for The Package. That path is
filled with the oddest surprises. The simple truths you thought you
knew—like the grace of being truly forgiven, the possibility of being
known and still loved—start to take shape inside you in ways that could
not happen with all your plans in place.
While you may take many trips over your life and unpack
your literal suitcase a thousand times, there is really only one journey
that matters—and that is the actual story that unfolds in learning to
trust God as you share his company.
If your life worked out the way you think you want—or
if you could just pretend that doesn’t matter—it would all be easier.
You might cruise into the sunset. But honestly, you’d miss out on a real
journey with God.
And you’d walk right past wonderful.
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© 2007 by Paula Rinehart