The process of getting to Georgia was hard; so hard, in fact, that you might know that I almost didn’t come.
Yet, it’s like I told a friend: every mile that I drove closer to the Georgia border, I felt another weight drop off. And another, and another, and another. By the time I pulled into the driveway of my now-home, I was so light I held onto my car handle for a moment, afraid I might let go and float away.
And now I’m here, and I see why the process was so freaking hard: it’s because me being here was so incredibly important.
It’s no mistake that the hardest part of anything is the beginning. The inception. The first step. A whole lot more people quit a marathon before every stepping onto a treadmill than those who give up at the starting line. Fear speaks loudly, and it also speaks steadily.
The stable life that so many of us want can sound a lot like the voice of fear – the dull, inoffensive promise that everything would be so much better if you just stopped, stayed, or – careful, here – rested. But take a step back, and you’ll see that most of us are passengers aboard a sinking ship. The journey of life sees us boarding and jumping many ships, and yet I always find myself hesitating when the thing is going down and God is presenting me with the lifeboat.
But it looks scary. Turbulent. You said this ship was where I belonged.
The premise is simple: transition, move, take the chance – or go down with the ship.
I want to get better and braver at choosing the hard thing the first go-around.
I want to be someone who, when given the option, goes above and beyond what’s expected. To see the act of changing, transitioning and just living life as something meant to be experienced intimately, instead of braced for.
I’m climbing the most tangled apple tree, and I’m grabbing for the apple at the top. I’m running the trail and I’m going left, past the signs that welcome “All Skill Levels” and bounding toward the ones that caution “Advanced Hikers Only”.
These things sound hard, and that’s because they are hard. But we should take life seriously. We should take our pleasure seriously. We should take our exploration of God, and all His mystery, seriously.
If I want dessert, I’m going to spend three hours in my kitchen up to my elbows in flour and Mexican vanilla before I’m gonna pull out a box of Chips Ahoy and binge. Boxed cookies would satiate the craving, but there is an entire process passed over in-between hunger and resolution. Understanding the object of my hunger and getting it all over my hands feels infinitely more fulfilling than curbing the desire with something cheap and moving on with my day.
Donald Miller says, “I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It’s a chocolate thing.”
Yah. That.
The knowledge of the mystery of God is a journey I’ll be on all my life. The different ships that sink under me offer me many chances to re-evaluate the path I’m on, to transition bravely, and to choose the harder path in pursuit of something worth having.
The apple at eye-level is still as sweet and worthy as the one hanging from the high branch, but my favourite part of anything is rapidly becoming the process of getting it. The climb through baby branches, losing my footing on the dry tree bark and drawing a speckling of blood across my skinned knee, and the secure snap of the stem pulling away from the leaves. They are all small, beautiful markers in the path to ultimate victory. Sitting on top of that tree with stray hairs blowing around my sunburnt cheeks sounds a hell of a lot more worthwhile than bagging a Golden Delicious from aisle 5.
I think God wants me to climb more trees.
