It's all about the journey
I've been looking through some old journals lately.
When I was 17, my pastor led a group of us youths in the Navigator's 2:7 Bible study course. It was this course that taught me how to journal. We were encouraged to note down a verse/phrase that had particularly impressed us during our Bible reading, and to record our thoughts on it or what we felt God was saying to us, thus applying the Word to our lives. Then we'd write down a prayer in response.
I'd been sporadically writing letters to God since my early teens, but journalling caught my imagination - perhaps because I simply love writing. And so I've been journalling ever since (not regularly, though. My relationship with God has been very up-and-down through the years!).
Reading through my old journals, I was surprised to see a very different me emerge. It was like, "That is not the Sunflower that I now know!" LOL
Many entries deal with the frustration of wanting to be more, to do more, to change... I see a picture of a girl who loved God, yes, but who was also very driven. Always trying to improve, to be responsible, to fulfil what she felt God expected of her, or what others expected of her, or - the worst - what she expected of herself.
There is impatience, dissatisfaction, and even a great deal of self-disgust in those entries sometimes. Coupled with that is a lot of fear, a lot of confusion and questioning and insecurity: "Am I pleasing You? Am I doing a good enough job? Why can't I just leave things in Your hands? Why do I still hurt so much? Why is my relationship with You so on-and-off, why can't I be consistent? I need to change - why is it taking so long for me to change? Will I ever be able to overcome this?"
I read my own words, and discover that so much of it was about me. Hmm. :)
And although I asked all these questions, I never really did slow down enough or stop to hear the answers. Silly, silly me!
But finally, I'm learning that it's all about the journey. I had been so focused on trying to get there that I'd overlooked the journey.
We are so conditioned to think that success = results + achievements that when we struggle, we feel such failures for not being able to reach the end goal. Or not reaching it sooner.
The truth is that God doesn't look at things that way. We talk about "walking with God", and that's precisely what He calls us to do - walk with Him. The journey is what's important - learning to walk with God even through the struggles and frustrations.
It has never been about results, but about relationship. The results flow FROM the relationship. They are a "by-product", so to speak.
Instead of doing, I had to learn to be more concerned about being; to be a child of God, to be God's. As His daughter, as the woman He wants me to be, the doing will come naturally, flowing from who I am. Oh, I see that now.
As I look back at the old me, I feel so far removed from her; I feel as if I have been made new, as if that old Sunflower existed in some past life or something. I'm amazed at the woman I see today in place of her: amazed at what God has done in my life, how much He has quietly been changing me even in the midst of all my, "Why is nothing happening, Lord??!" LOL