Every Journey Begins with This

September 15, 2014

Remember the old proverb “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”? That isn’t exactly accurate.

The journey doesn’t actually begin with the first step; it begins with the decision to make the first step. Then it continues with more and more decisions to take more and more steps.

You see, until you make up your mind to take the journey, you won’t go anywhere. You might accomplish a few steps, but chances are good that you’ll give up pretty quickly because your heart just isn’t in it. Neither is your mind.

Our minds are powerful tools. God gave us minds for a good reason, and doesn’t expect us to check them at the door of the church. Until the recent past, Christian culture seemed to believe that the mind wasn’t involved in any godliness.

I got caught in the middle of this argument when I was young. You see, my church apparently believed that a girl should never be smarter than a boy. A girl majoring in biology with a chemistry minor? Unless it was with the goal of becoming a nurse or teacher, there was something wrong with that. And to top it all off, I was going to college for a BS degree, not an “Mrs.” one. Shocking!

There was no way I was going to submerge my strong mind and intelligence to the false belief of “a girl should be planning on marriage to a godly man as the only way to please God and live her faith.” And when I made a decision, I stuck with it. Stubborn? Maybe. I’ve also been called persistent. And that persistence benefited me well on my healing journey.

Time after time I had to decide whether to continue or give up. Time after time the temptation to avoid the pain of the unknown fought with the understanding that the only healing lay ahead. That God was waiting for me to take the next leg of the trip, and that He would wait for me there.

Are you willing to make the decision? It can be a very hard one. The fear of the unknown fights with the fear of remaining stuck in your familiar pain.