A Finished... Post

A stop on the journey.

A pause in the music.

The end of a chapter.

Each reminds me that I haven't arrived at the destination, the resolution, or the happy ending.

I think in life, we are obsessed with arrival. I rarely meet the person who is content with the moment they are living now. We press on, make goals, dream big, drive forward with purpose - all in pursuit of something we cannot even really define.

Perhaps this "arrival" mentality seems starkly obvious to me because of my high school reading. I was addicted to Christian romance novels. But every one of the hundreds I read left me longing for more than the happy ending on that last page. I kept turning pages after the final kiss, hoping for an epilogue, a letter from the author, something that told me what happened after the characters had realized the bliss of being in love. Did they really live happily ever after? What did that look like?

I used to neatly conclude my journal entries as if my life was so neatly organized I could live that way for the rest of my life. If I was journaling about a struggle, I had to resolve it by the end of the entry (This led to some very looonngg journal entries.), and if I was writing about an event, I had to draw some life lesson or another from what had happened. I had to have that conclusion, that "this is the end of the matter."

Blogging has been a particular challenge for me in this area. I believe that good writing does beg a conclusion, but I am finding that not everything I write needs an organized answer that is applicable to the rest of my life.

I blog from my place in the story, knowing that tomorrow there will be another part of the story, that I may grow and change the way I think or feel. I may be a different person in a year than I am today.

I think for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of this. God is the only one who can say "I AM." He is the only one who never changes, who has been and will always be exactly who He is.

Yesterday, I felt a growing discontent. Today, I find that I can be content knowing that the whole story is not written, my journey is not over, my song is unfinished.

Life, unlike the novels I used to read, does not end at the climax. There are climaxes and there are periods of rest. There are times when it seems nothing is happening and times when I feel caught in a maelstrom.

It is faith that tells me the conclusion of my story. It doesn't say that I will see the fulfillment of the promises I claim - but I know the end. I know that one day, I will see His face in righteousness and be satisfied when I awake in His likeness (Psalm 17:15). I know that He will complete the work He began in me. Faith itself is what enables the living before the ending. It is the reason that I am not afraid to make mistakes, to be human, to believe that Christ really is enough.

I think it is easy to take lessons from what the heroes of faith did or didn't do. It is much harder to do or don't do in the place I am and see that the God they knew is really enough to allow me to rest with my life unfinished and my story half composed.

Forever isn't today, I'm finding, and I'm learning not to be afraid of that.

(It does make me wonder if those new mercies Jeremiah kept finding every morning are really as new as he felt they were... I love the thought that He is so faithful that I can start new each moment and find His mercy there for the last one!)