Tag: traveling mercies

I currently have 38 drafts saved in my Tumblr account. Unfinished and unpublished, none of these drafts occurred within this new year and I don’t even know how many of them occurred within the last year. I suppose I wrote a few times last year, but mostly I just posted pictures of food and became really unhealthy in the process.

Somewhere along life’s journey I got lost… again. I look back on the life I have lived over the last thirty years and much of it consists of getting lost, finding my way again, getting lost again, finding my way again, and so it goes… again and again.

I used to think I would arrive at some point where I finally found it or did it or became it and I don’t know if I ever really knew what it was, but I knew it didn’t involve getting lost and having to ask for help. To finally arrive meant I no longer needed help and I would have thought that by the time I reached thirty I would no longer need help, with anything really.

I don’t know why I thought this, I don’t know if someone told me this along the way or if I just conjured it up in my head all those times I played “journey” as a kid. Yes, while most other girls played house, making tea and cleaning for their pretend husbands and babies, my sister and I were playing “journey.” We would pack our bags with blankets and apples, along with markers and paper to make maps and together we would pretend we were run-aways or adventurers going on a long journey, never actually arriving to our destination. The game was all about the journey and what happened along the way, it was never about arriving to a certain spot because we never actually arrived to a certain spot, unless dinner was ready then we would arrive home for dinner, but in the game there was no arriving. We would set up camp in a tree for a short while, long enough to snack on an apple, check our maps and catch our breath, but always we continued on our way through the “mountains” of our surrounding neighborhood. For the record, there were no actual mountains, just the imagination being played out on the flat coastline of South Carolina.

The beautiful and sad thing about the imagination of a child is that at some point you grow up, and at some point you start hearing the voices that tell you you need to grow up, you need to succeed, you need to accomplish, you need to arrive. I don’t know at what age I realized that it seemed more important to arrive somewhere than it did to journey somewhere, but my guess would be middle school. I think anybody who has made it through middle school has a right to blame a lot of their issues on middle school. I think Flannery O’Connor said something to that effect, but I can’t be so sure as to quote her verbatim.

I’m not blaming middle school for my getting lost time and time again, there comes a time in life when the same old excuse loses its validity as an excuse at all; I’m just citing middle school as a possible starting point for thinking the day would come when I would finally arrive, even if I hesitated to arrive at all.

I love road trips, I have always loved road trips, and most of what I love about them, if not all of what I love about them, is the road itself, the state of being in which you are constantly on a journey. Whether I am merely heading to the grocery store, a friend’s house or a national park I have yet to see, there is always the slightest bit of disappointment upon the arrival, not because I don’t want to be there, but because the journey has in some way come to an end. I look back and it makes sense to me that I played “journey” as a kid instead of “house,” I never wanted to be still, I never wanted to settle down, I never wanted to arrive, I just wanted to journey.

At thirty years old, I still have yet to arrive, and perhaps this is what I have come to accept about life, that while there is a time for everything, even being still, life in and of itself is a journey, and we will never actually arrive on this side of eternity. For a restless heart like mine, I take great peace in knowing that I am not expected to arrive, at least not to a state of perfection, of having it all figured out, of knowing it all, applying it all and being it all. On this side of eternity I am already who I always wanted to be, a sojourner. Perhaps I was on to something as a kid and I forgot along the way as I grew up and sought out perfection instead of character.

I have made a lot of mistakes in the last few years, some the result of an intentional poor choice and some not at all, some I wasn’t even aware were mistakes until I took a second to look back and notice the wreckage. I say that to say I’ve messed up, time and time again, mostly because I have been trying so hard to finally arrive instead of slowing down enough to take part in the journey. I’ve been racing to a finish line that I don’t even necessarily want to get to because it’s not only unrealistic, it’s lonely. Nobody is perfect and so even if I did by some bizarre, unnatural twist of fate reach that goal of perfection, I can guarantee you that I would be there alone, and alone in this world is not somewhere I want to be, not a place I want to arrive.

I cannot undo things that have been done in the past any more than I can take back words that have been spoken. I can only own my part in the damage I have done, seek forgiveness where it needs to be sought and move forward from here, finding my way yet again on this journey of life, reminding myself that you are never too old to ask for help.

My job is coming to an end this month and a new journey is beginning. I am a mix of nerves and excitement, peace and chaos, confusion and clarity, dark and light, dust and divine breath.

My plan, my hope, my prayer is to write more in an effort to live more. I feel most alive when I am writing and mainly because it means I have actually been living, which is where my best writing material comes from… life. If writing is evidence of life then last year looked a lot more like death than life. You don’t have to look much further than my Tumblr archive to see what I mean. You will find pretty pictures of sandwiches that look like animals and vegan desserts made from twigs and berries, but you won’t find much past that. You won’t find many stories about life, about people, about hope and redemption, about grace and forgiveness. You will find bright colors and perfectly positioned subject matters, but you won’t find any warmth or any subjects that actually matter (save the few faces of some adorable kids, those faces matter).

Perhaps a blog is a lame place to start, but I am lame and in need of a new start, and so I am starting in the best way I know how, with writing, even if just on this blog. I am taking a baby step in a new direction on this long journey of life, extending grace to myself when I lose my way and grace to others when they lose theirs. After all, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.

Traveling mercies, seventy times seven, grace upon grace,

jennie joy