Images of success and completion come to mind, or making it to one's destination after a long journey, or getting to the place where you wanted to be.
To arrive.
It seems as though we try to break down life into segments of arrivals.
For my preschooler, it is getting to the end of a long day and snuggling down in his bed next to his seven favorite stuffed animals. Or it is getting to go on the donut date with Daddy that they've been anticipating for weeks. Arriving is comfortable.
For my toddler, it is pulling into our garage and yelling, "Home!" Or it is successfully getting his shorts on all by himself. Arriving is joyous.
I grew up with the unconscious notion that there would be a time when I would "arrive." And I would be comfortable and full of joy... When I would get married. When I would establish a career. When I would become a mom. There was a notion deep in me that with those things would come a cease from striving and straining, a peace from the struggle against an unmet desire.
But just like the phenomenon of feeling like you were very grown up in 8th grade until you experience high school, and just like you feel grown up in high school until you experience college, I find myself in the midst of realizing how much more I need to grow.
God is bringing to light the depth of growing and striving and straining and struggling that is ahead of me.
I will never "arrive" as a wife. The longer I am married, the more I feel this truth. I will continually have areas where I can improve. My love and I will struggle as we experience hard life situations. We will strive toward the goal of a relationship that is pleasing to God and each other. We will grow as we are challenged to love each other as God loves. But there is no arriving: just striving, straining, struggling, and growing.
And I'm starting to realize that I will never arrive as a mom (so I'm a little slow sometimes...). As I hear the concerns of moms who are twice my age, it is strikingly obvious that there is no arriving in motherhood. There are constantly new battles to fight. There are endless areas of improvement. There is an unending morphing of the relationship between mother and child as years go by. Striving, straining, struggling, growing: yes. Arriving: no.
These things in my life, these areas of growing, these never-completed roles keep me humble. And they keep me focused.
Focused on arriving in a place with no more need for striving, straining, struggling or growing. There is ONE place where I can truly arrive, and that will be my final home. Heaven. Safe in my Father's arms. Free from the sin that prohibits completion. Free from the straining and striving. Settled and complete.
In the midst of feeling incompetent or incapable as a wife and mom, in the midst of feeling like the growing pains are too much to take, this is a beautiful truth. Oh, my heart yearns for it. And I thank God for the hope that arriving brings.
I yearn for my boys to know it. Somedays, I am tempted to talk about next year with more passion than I use to talk about eternity. But instead of making a big deal about a new shoe size or tick on the height chart, I want to draw their eyes to how they are maturing in their forgiveness or how they are growing by leaps and bounds in the way they show love to others around them. I pray that God can use me teach them that the importance of their failures and successes is measured by the way in which those experiences prepare their hearts for eternity.
No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Philippians 3:13-14
Someday, there will be a cease to this journey. Someday, there will be an intimacy that doesn't need tweaking or redefining. In a beautiful mess, the growing we do here points us to the arriving that we will enjoy there.
This vision is for a future time.
It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled.
If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently,
for it will surely take place.
It will not be delayed. Habakkuk 2:3
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