We take seven journeys in life.
Last month I wrote about our first journey, “Welcome to the Garden of Eden,” where we begin growing up and leave the buoyancy of infancy and adolescence and move into a world of adult responsibility – a place in our life decorated with questions such as “Where can I go to find answers?”
To find answers, we take a second journey. I call it “The Passover Journey.” On this journey we make attempts to find answers and make numerous mistakes to discover “The Big Picture.” We ask, “What is life all about?” We take endless risks not knowing how our life will turn out, and we bind ourselves to commitments like car payments, mortgages, employment, marriage and divorce and parenting, to learn about ways to understand ourselves. Some go to church to find “The Big Picture.” Some resist church for the same reason. Some increase their education. Some explore life.
The Passover Journey serves as that time in life when we, still in our 20s and 30s, find life exciting, limitless, and confusing. We possess boundless energy, taking side trips to make sense of who we seem to be. We wonder, “Am I on the path that authenticates my being?” Without fully understanding the consequences of many of our actions, we test the depth of life’s chaotic waters, swimming to this shore and that, diving deep to find the bottom, and floating just to see where we land.
That we survive this phase of our life at all can be attributed in part to God’s willingness to help crises, injury, and death pass over us. More than once my parents wondered how I made it through young adulthood. I believe that, when I look back at this time, somehow God protected me as I explored life. Of course, some of us take our exploits too far, and we find ourselves in places where we need constant care and supervision – like a hospital or care facility. Yet, even then, we still live with opportunities to love and be loved regardless of imposed limits.
In this Passover Journey, No. 2, we live like ducks, walking across a busy highway, causing drivers to stop to let us cross. What a miracle is this passover time! Exciting journeys fill our days. Our walking shoes stay tied on our feet so we can go faster and faster. Eventually, we find a path that may take us to our land of promise, where we can live as ourselves. We never know where our land of promise exists until after we’ve wandered in a wilderness, sometimes hungry and thirsty and complaining about feeling lost and alone. We learn about who we seem to be. We discover our limitations and who we wish not to be or cannot be, deciding that we cannot be all things to all people.
And so, from infancy to adolescence we go on an exciting, inspiring and disorienting journey, setting the stage for our growth during Journey No. 2, when harms and traumas pass over us as we seek to find life’s meaning. Once under divine protection, we enter into a third journey, where our newly found talents, skills, and dreams get tested and honed, making us even more responsible and accountable not only to ourselves, but, also, accountable to the world around us.
Next month: Our third journey – The Wilderness.