It’s been a few weeks since my last post — which is another way of saying, “I’ve been failing at hitting my goal of posting every week.”
To be honest, I’ve started and abandoned several posts. I’ve written and deleted paragraph after paragraph on several different topics. All of them are topics that are meaningful to me and that I’d love to discuss, which begs the question, “So why haven’t you followed through with posting?”
Great question.
The honest answer is twofold.
First (and least), I haven’t felt like any of them have reached the point where they’re fully presentable. This happens to me a lot though, and I usually patch things up hastily and just post it anyways. If I always wait for perfection before I post, I will never post. (There’s a maxim in there for most efforts in life.)
Second (and probably the real reason), is that after just about everything I’ve written I’ve gotten this feeling that it’s probably more for me than for anybody else. I’ve been in a season of introspection, of self-examination, and of trying to really think about life and what I’m doing with what I’ve been given and whether or not I’m honoring God with every part of it. It’s a great, eye-opening, challenging, sometimes depressing season to be in. It’s also made it so that, in general, my thoughts have been applied more to myself and they feel a lot less applicable in a general sense. So, they either feel so specific that I don’t think anybody else will care much to hear them, or they are so general that they feel forced and inauthentic. So, I’ve just held back.
But one thing that sharing this brings to mind, and it fits in with some of what I’ve written and deleted over the last few weeks, is that I think this process is important. The process of wrestling with who I am and what I’m doing and where I’m going and whether what I’m saying holds any value or if it’s just hot air – it’s an invaluable process. Whether anybody else get’s anything out of it is irrelevant, although I do think people will benefit from knowing, at the very least, that there’s somebody out there going through the same thing as they are. I think a lot of times we get caught up in getting “there” and end up being a person we don’t like by the time we arrive. Or we expect to reach our destination immediately and get disappointed when it takes time. This process of wrestling with yourself helps make sure you are who you want to be whether or not you ever get to where you want to be.
Whether or not I’m ever successful, I want to be loving. Whether or not I’m ever affluent, I want to have character. Whether or not I’m ever a great writer or a revered public speaker, I want to be a great husband and a respected father. To a certain extent, I don’t really care where I’m going. I just want to be a man that my wife and kids and God can smile at when I get there.
The Endeavor 