The Life Is In The Process

We have an idea that God is leading us to a particular end, a desired goal; He is not. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end.” -Oswald Chambers

Yesterday, I was getting frustrated because I’m trying to write a book. The writing plan of the day wasn’t really working out. Before any damage could be done I stepped away from the computer, woke up my napping walking companion and we went for a quiet walk. The beagle with his nose to the ground could walk for hours with me tagging along beside him.

I read once that writers need to take long walks. Maybe to let the noise in the mind calm down so other senses can be engaged. I notice after I decide to take a deep long breath and shift my focus. The sun on my skin, the scent of dried grass, little shifts of focus.

We walked and a thought went through my mind: Do you want to write a book or do you want to be a writer? I know it seems contradictory but really it isn’t. I understood this question and it slowed me down, mind and body. I’ve been writing all my life.

Most of it privately hidden away in journals or diaries with cute little locks that never kept a spying brother out. How could I not write? I notice things, hear things, think things and I write most of it down one way or another. I write things out and try to wrap my brain around them.

At first honestly I felt a chastisement. As if I didn’t really know or understand what I wanted, as if I was way off base getting frustrated about not fulfilling my book writing agenda for the day. I wanted both. A book and to be a writer.

I was thinking of the finished goal. God was thinking of the process. God doesn’t care if a book is the end product. He cares that I’m writing. He cares that I’m embracing my true self as God created me to be, using the talents and gifts given. He cares that when I write sometimes it feels like prayer.

When I seek my own goal to be done my way and in my timing, the end becomes what I worship rather than God. I’m certain God wants me to write. He wants me to go through this learning process of writing a whole book, He has guided me for months in this direction. But whether or not it’s a success or not? God doesn’t care about that.

It is my obedience to what I feel He is leading me to do and the whole process of withstanding storms along the way. He doesn’t want me to lose the quiet, contemplative posture of my soul that makes me a writer in the first place.

“His end is the process- that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the sea.” Oswald Chambers