Embrace Your Journey
There is a picture hanging up in my home that has 3 words over a vintage map: Embrace Your Journey.
These 3 words, combined with the image of the world, has brought me much comfort over the past few months, as I have looked at it, because it reminds me that my life is not in competition with anyone else’s.
My race, my journey, is mine. Yours is yours.
There is a famous quote that goes a little something like this – ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’
Why do you think that is?
I think it steals our joy because we will never win once we start comparing our lives with other people’s. There will always be someone smarter, richer, slimmer, taller. So why do it to ourselves?
Embrace your journey.
Embrace your journey.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (TLB) says this:
‘In a race everyone runs, but only one person gets first prize. So run your race to win. To win the contest you must deny yourselves many things that would keep you from doing your best. An athlete goes to all this trouble just to win a blue ribbon or a silver cup, but we do it for a heavenly reward that never disappears. So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. I fight to win. I’m not just shadow-boxing or playing around. Like an athlete I punish my body, treating it roughly, training it to do what it should, not what it wants to. Otherwise I fear that after enlisting others for the race, I myself might be declared unfit and ordered to stand aside.’
There is freedom when you get a revelation of staying in your own lane and running your own race. Now you can commit all of your focus to that forward gaze, not looking to the left or the right, but straight ahead.
It takes discipline to stay in your lane and embrace your own journey. To not get distracted and veer off-course but to run straight, with ‘purpose in every step’ you need to know what you are called to and how you can best pursue that calling.
Finally, enjoy it! Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow down and enjoy the pace.
Enjoy the journey on the way to where you are going.
