Journey. The word is affecting me strangely, as a free-write prompt word. (At Five Minute Friday.)
I’ve used it enough times to refer to moving through a painful time or a time of necessary growth. I’ve written “journey journals” that recorded my progression through some particular trial or other.
But right now, I don’t want to do what I consider journey. I’d like to take a vacation trip instead. And then I’d like to come home and be able to settle in one place, my own little niche, and not have to journey, journey, journey, as if all life were a day by day climb up a mountainside that never reaches the top, and the rest-stop hostels are sometimes hostile and without the comforts associated with home, sweet home.
Though maybe life is just like that, climbing, never arriving, every rest stop only temporary and brief. The top comes later. The climb is called growth. We’re higher up and further along in our ascent, but we can’t always see the view that reveals our upward progress.
The oddest part of this odd reaction is that I’ve been living in the same place for over twenty years now, and haven’t lived like a nomad at all. And there’s a lot of travel I actually long for wistfully: to see more of God’s great, wide, amazing world. The word “travel” implies a leisurely pace, a recreation vacation. Journey sounds like a whole different thing, a possibly arduous trek toward a desired destination whose location is very uncertain.
So this feeling about journeying is symbolic, figurative—and enigmatic.
I don’t fully understand it. I don’t know what it’s all about. But it must be something I need to explore further, need to plunge ahead, and… dare I say it?… journey toward insight and resolution? I hope not. I wish my destination would come to me for once. But then, maybe it will…
Thought-provoking post. I agree there is something that sounds arduous about the word journey compared with travel, which sounds more exciting. I think sometimes we can plod on with the journey, not feeling like we’re making any progress, but then there are those beautiful moments when we look back and see that we’ve actually moved on.
You are so right, Lesley about seeing later in retrospect that we actually have moved on, and sometimes even in the right direction! What I found God was evidently showing me in this case was that sometimes, like this week, I set myself too rigorous a destination to reach and turned what could have been a lovely stroll into a plod, plod, plod! It was a good day today of being gentler with myself. Thanks for visiting and sharing!
I’ll be traveling to Iona, and that feels arduous to me. Of course, the word “jour,” French for “day” is in the word journey. I know as you journal your journey God will bring meaning and insight to your days.
Now that just goes to show how varied perspectives can be, Lynni! Traveling to Iona sounds inviting, even exotic, to me at this stuck-in-a-box point. But when I think about it a little more, I can see how such travel could be arduous, without its being what we think of as a “journey” today.
I did know “journey” comes from the French “jour” and so originally meant a day trip. Maybe if we’d just focus more on the day at hand (like Jesus said!) we (I) wouldn’t feel so bogged down at times as we (I) do. And you are also so right about the journaling of one’s “journey” (especially if we do it daily). God does bring meaning and insight through it. He has been doing that with me, more and more since I wrote this post. May He do that for you as you… journey?… to Iona! (Please take pictures! 😉 )
PS. Lynni, I did a little checking on travel to Iona, because it did sound interesting, but the more I read, the less I thought I’d want to go to all the, yes, arduous, trouble. It really is quite complicated, isn’t it? God bless your trip richly, nonetheless. And still do take pictures!