It's All Part of the Process

Quietly, the sun rises over the eastern horizon,
The cold dark expanse advances and recedes
Along the mist covered sands.
Off in the distance
Seabirds cry out
As they begin their morning hunt.
The ocean breeze carries their sound to me,
And makes me shiver.
I stand there, alone in my thoughts
Trying to shake off the effects
Of another sleepless night,
Trying to capture that new,
Waking feeling that comes with
Each new day.

Trying, yet in vain,
For the feeling once again,

… eludes me.

I wrote the poem above almost 29 years ago, as a teenager feeling a little lost in the world. I have often observed that I have an old soul laced with melancholy, and looking back on those words I find it hard to deny. And here I am, all these years later, with a penchant for watching the sun rise over the hills and fields behind my house, feeling almost exactly the same way. I have so many wonderful blessings I can count: a loving, stable family, a nice home, a good church, and a job that while consuming enables me to take care of my family. We've had our share of troubles: loss of home, car accidents, health scares, but we've managed to do okay through it all. I really have absolutely nothing to complain about. I have been most fortunate.

And yet.

I watch the sun come up in all its glory, with a light breeze inviting the steam from my coffee to spiral away, and in the undeniably peaceful moment, I still find myself feeling a little lost in the world. I'm not certain where I'm headed, if in fact I am heading any particular direction. I've never been an overly driven person, and have only fleeting experiences with the kind of passion that motivates one to go beyond and immerse themselves into any particular thing. Hobbies? No, not really. Just haven't really found one that energizes me in any particular way.

None of this is uncommon to a man my age, I know this. Yet that knowledge does little to assuage the disorientation I feel at certain times. In Philippians 4:12-13, the Apostle Paul speaks of contentment, and the truth that such peace can be found in any circumstances through Jesus Christ. I've known contentment, even in some very hard circumstances. Being content, of course, is a state of the mind, a state of the heart. As such, that sense of contentment is subject to the meanderings of mood and the fickleness of feelings. But this idea of contentment has a cousin: the concept of fulfillment. Scriptures are a little less clear on the matter of fulfillment. But as illustrated by James 1:2-4, one can infer that fulfillment (becoming "mature and complete, lacking in nothing") is in fact a process. We all yearn to be "whole", and we are all at times very painfully aware that we are not. Oh sure, we get glimpses from that mountain top now and then, but it doesn't take much for that sense of incompleteness to reassert itself. I can only conclude that fulfillment, being a process, is an achievement that may be realized only after a lifelong pursuit. There will always be some part of me not yet complete, not quite whole - until the day comes when all things are completed, when all things are made whole.

The above can be summed up as simply as this: Contentment is a state; fulfillment is a process. The challenge: somehow being content within that process.

If any of this makes sense, and if any of it is true, where does that leave me? My coffee cup is empty, and the day still beckons. I still feel a little lost. I suppose I can rationalize it this way: it is okay to feel what I feel, because feelings are transitory and are a natural part of life. The key is to press on, remembering that fulfillment is possible. It just may take a while. And that allows me to be content in the hope that for those moments when I feel a little lost, they won't last. It's all a part of the process.