False Destinations

God has called all of us to a story, written out over the years from our birth to our present. He has invited us to allow this story to be true, without edit on our own, without our power of revision, it is simply to be true. Our birth place, parents, friends and influences all play a role in who we become, damage that is done and how well we love others. All of our story is true whether we want it to be or not. It is the process of living and sanctification that we are supposed to be enjoying and satisfied with, not the false destinations that we find ourselves so attracted towards. The end of our lives is the "golden ring", the prize we are all striving towards, but until then, He invited us to experience freedom, joy, grace, love, faith, to be known by others and to be loved and to give love well. That takes time and intention on our parts. To enjoy the story unfolding in your life you must let it be true.

Most of our destinations, these false destinations, revolved around us. Our accomplishments, our jobs, promotions, money, getting a ministry in place, moving to a new city to start a new life, school, whatever we are doing, all false destinations. This is why I say these things: No destination here will ever satisfy us. We were not created to be satisfied in a place that is not home. This world and nothing in it will quiet the place in our hearts that says "I'm not home yet." But we go about our lives accumulating stories that we look back to and somewhat sadly speak to all of these places where something ended, but little of our time is spent telling others about what it was like while we were "in it".

I love road trips. The best "lost" art of American families is the long road trip. Put me in a car for 12 hours traveling to the mountains, give me a bag of twizzlers, a greasy spoon along the way, I'm happy. But it is rarely the conversations that we have on the way that we speak of later. I think we are missing something here. By straining towards these false destinations we are all missing out on the process. In what God calls life are moments along the way to pause and remember. And this is not necessarily the ending place. Many people who go through stressful events often talk about the ending, where God came through, but what about the middle where He sat with us when no one else would? What about the middle where He showed us our hearts and transformed us? What about these "unfinished" places?

I invite you to take a look at your life, where have you been? What did you miss along the way by straining towards the destination? A few years ago my wife and I were so busy moving towards school in Seattle that we missed months of time to catch up with friends in Dallas. We didn't realize it until they all showed for the "farewell" party. I would like to think that woke me up, but I think it is still far easier to get caught up in stretching for home rather than sitting in the middle. The middle is that place where loss and pain often live. We are so good at editing out pain from our stories that our lives rarely look like anything that needed redemption. But isn't that the point, that we did? Destination focused lives take away the need to show why we find ourselves where we do, story doesn't matter, only the end. Stephen King never starts a book with an ending in mind, he allows the story to take him there, and so should we.