Journey

The blogs that I like to follow are ones where the authors are on some kind of journey. Either they are moving to another country or working on a project or trying to start something. I won't bore you with the links to the sites I frequent; also, I like to think that I am the only one in on their struggles and adventures.

What kind of journey are you on? Or am I on? I am on a journey toward being a father of not one, but two beautiful and amazing children. I am on a journey into middle age, and ask my wife, it's not a pretty sight. I'm on a journey to discovering, or re-discovering, some of the reasons that I - Tom - am here at this particular time and this particular place in the grand scheme of things. I am on a journey to knowing God better than I did yesterday, or in my twenties or in my teens. I am on the way to becoming a better video producer, a better writer, a better husband, son, brother, in-law, cousin and friend. At least I hope so.

It's so easy to opt for the comfortable, the reliable, the usual. But I don't want - have never wanted, nor accepted - the "average," or the safe. I am on that journey. I am not starting one. I have been on this journey for more than twenty years. I may feel like I am stuck at the train station for much too long this time, but that locomotive will round the corner once again and I will feel the wind on my cheeks on the journey into the unknown.

Just one thing, though. The journey is always deliberate. It is never passive. It may appear that the hero is thrust out into an unwanted adventure, but secretly, in the mists of memory, the hero wanted to be called out of the "ordinary" into the dangerous life of the real. The True.

It's that "fully alive" thing that gets batted about in books and on talk shows. The problem is, most times, you can't be "fully alive" if you try to be "fully alive." I talked about being predisposed to being interrupted before. I think that I must be deliberate in being predisposed to being what Gabriel Marcel called available. Available to God, to my wife, children, boss, friends, etc.

I am on a journey to becoming more deliberately available.