Are We There Yet?

Note: A conversation with a friend last night got me to thinking about how fast time goes by the older you get. We discussed how, as kids, family road trips took forever and how long a year seemed to be. It has been a year since my friend and I have seen each other on a daily basis, but it seems like mere days ago. There are similarities between a child's view of the passage of time and our relationships with God. This post is dedicated to Casey Jones for helping me understand those similarities.

I remember when I was a kid and my family still took vacations and road trips together. I would sit in the back seat of our big Dodge van and ask my parents, “Are we there yet?!” A day is forever when you’re five, and that’s how long it usually felt it took to get wherever it was we were going. My Mom would always buy coloring books, Gold Fish crackers and other road trip goodies to keep me and my sister, Sarah, occupied. Sometimes Mom’s entertainments where the most exciting and anticipated parts of the trip. She always had a way of catching my imaginative eye with a quick $10 stop by Wal-Mart on the way out of town. Inevitably though, no matter how interesting Mom’s gifts may have initially seemed, my sister and I would become restless and start the endless questioning, “Are we there yet,” and, “how much longer Daddy,” because Daddy always drove. In hindsight I see these were the times Dad didn’t mind stopping for a rest break because Mom would pull out the Dimetapp® and drug me and Sarah out of our misery. One quick cherry sip and off to dream world we would slip. I also remember when I realized that Dimetapp® wasn’t just a sweet treat and what it was actually for and how horrified I was that my parents would do something like that to me. Honestly, those were probably the best naps of my life. I would wake up feeling so refreshed and so alive. The scenery changed while I slept and the sun moved to the opposite side of the sky to cast different hues on the horizon. And usually, the wait was almost over. Grandma’s house, the Grand Canyon, or the Smokey Mountains would be just around the corner or just up ahead and I could sense the journey’s end.

I’m now twenty two years old and I often find myself asking God the same questions I asked my parents when I was younger. How much farther? Are we almost there? The adventures of faith from my younger years now seem like simple activities to keep me occupied on the journey and now I’m so restless I’m practically begging God to knock me out until the end is near. But God doesn’t work like that. He doesn’t dispense spiritual Dimetapp® to make the trip easier or go by faster. Now is when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. This is where it really counts. I want so desperately to arrive in life. I’m ready to be fully engaged in what the Lord has for me, to be actively fulfilling my purpose for being here and not just preparing for it.

I’m beginning to understand who it is the Lord created me to be. I see how my passions are connected to my giftings and why I’ve experienced the things in life I have experienced, both pleasurable and sorrowful. A vision of purpose is being birthed in me that is beautifully painful. Someone once told me that visions and dreams are like seeds and have to die before they can truly come alive. I’m starting to understand what this means. My heart held such exciting visions in the innocence of my youth, but somewhere along the road those dreams where smothered, sometimes even murdered. But that was not the journey’s end. The exciting part is just beginning. I guess I’m sort of glad God doesn’t drug me like my parents use to do. Experiencing the journey and understanding how I’ll reach my destined destination will make the arrival that much better.

As a kid I’d wake up from those drug-induced naps on road trips and wonder how did the scenery changed so dramatically while I was asleep. God wants me to experience Him on the journey He is taking me on. And I guess that’s okay with me, because I know that someday, just as I did when I was a little boy, I will get to wherever it is that I am going and God will be there with me, even though I pester Him with questions, “How much farther? Are we there yet?”