In all honesty, I haven't looked at the cards form my first vision quest since I initially wrote them out. When I wrote those words from my prayer I was at the beginning of the divorce process. We had had our initial hearing about a month before this retreat, and the reality was beginning to sink in. Part of me was still hopeful that reconciliation could happen, and I continued to fight for restoration in the coming months, but God does not interfere with free will, and my ex-wife chose to continue with the termination of our marriage.
As I've been revisiting this retreat, it has caused me to do a lot of reflecting. I look at the way I used to live, with Someday in mind, and I was miserable. I wasn't fighting for anything, I thought I was, but my life consisted of getting out of bed and moving to the couch until my daughter got up, and once they left I would go to work. I'd come home, sit on the couch until I put my daughter to bed, then I'd sit back on the couch until I went to bed. There was some school work thrown in there, but the majority of my life was that general routine. I hate admitting that, but that's the reality. I had plans for someday, big plans. I had hopes and dreams, and someday they would all come true.
The reality is that someday never gets here. It is always a distant illusion, and the cause of many wasted hours, days, and years.
The lessons learned on this vision quest proved to be the beginning thought process of my own growth and healing. I still hope and dream for the future, but I'm at the point where I do more than that. In the past year and a half, I've begun to actively pursue some things. I've been very intentional about finding my identity, this has been huge, but I've had to go beyond simply learning it, I've had to begin to own it and live it. This has been more of a challenge, but I feel that I have recently begun to really make some decent progress (more on this in the not too distant future, probably).
I've realized that the future is not guaranteed; that the work I'm putting in, the goals I'm aiming at, do not promise to be successful. However, the risk of failure is not a valid excuse, and I have to move forward, embracing the risk, and trusting that God will not forsake me. I will fail at certain things, that's just the reality of life, but I've gotten to the point where I'd rather fail trying than play it safe and let everything fall apart without a fight.
This quote from Teddy Roosevelt keeps coming to my mind:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
God has been at work in my life, but I finally started to pay attention August 26, 2016. I've been on a second vision quest since then, more on that in the next few posts, and He's been shaping my focus, and in doing that has begun to lead me to something I don't know was really ever on my radar, again more on this soonish.
For now, I simply want to forget about someday, and live intentionally now. I want to prepare for the future by actively engaging now in this moment. I want to own my identity, and enter the arena, and if I fail, I've failed daring greatly. If I fail, I've failed while fighting a lion.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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