Can you promise that I will come back? ~ Bilbo Baggins
No. & if you do, you will not be the same. ~ Gandalf
the hobbit: an unexpected journey // film version

We’ve all had those moments when we’re smack-dab in the middle of something & we sort of pause & huff in frustration with an “I saw this playing out quite differently in my mind”.

From a vacation itinerary
to the next 15 years of our life
to tomorrow morning’s pre-work routine,
we move & operate in ideals.

Ideals are more than just a plan;
they’re the preferred way,
the best possible course.
We like them ’cause they’re safe & predicatable;
no.curveballs.

It’s the Bilbo-Baggins-Hobbit Mentality:
We are plain quiet folk & have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner. I can’t think what anybody sees in them. We don’t want any adventures here, thank you!

Nobody likes Adventures.

They’re seldom fun while you’re having them & it’s only afterwards, in hindsight, when you’re back home in your cozy chair beside the fire, that they make for a good story.
It’s exhilarating to recount the mishaps on a vacation or the hurdles you had to overcome in a particular trial;
but those mishaps & hurdles aren’t enjoyable while you’re in them.
That’s why we often say “this’ll make a good story to tell the grandkids”.
We’re not having fun in the moment but we know it’ll be Something Else if we make it through so we pep-talk ourselves through the frustrations & the confusion & the tears.

Ideals don’t involve Adventure.
Ideals are a straight course charted through to the end with no deviations & no discomfort.
But, alas, Life isn’t ideal.
& pretending like it is will only bring increased frustration & grief.
We’re fighting to make the picture in our mind line up with the reality before us;
& we’re losing.

& man, it’s annoying.
real annoying.

Like here we had these grand plans & high hopes & Things planned;
& now we’re being foiled at (what seems like) every.single.turn
& we’re not happy about it.

As Christians, we intellectually understand & whole-heartedly believe in the sovereignty of our King.
We know “man plans his way but Yahweh directs his steps”.
We know we aren’t in control.
We know these curveballs come for our eternal good ’cause they’re not flung by Fate.
We know Christ loves us.

We know it all.
& yet, we wrestle with our ideals.
Eventually, we realize we have to bury them;
but it’s a half-hearted burying, one with just a layer of dirt to put it out of sight but not out of mind. They’re still close enough to the surface that we can resurrect them at a moment’s notice,
when the breeze blows just right,
we sniff the air,
& get giddy
& slide that soil right off.

Then there’s more wrestling & we finally accept the Truth:
our Ideal died a while ago & we’re just clinging to a corpse.

Things are very much not going according to (our) plan & we must bow in submission to our King. & it’s more than that, it’s more than just accepting His will & even believing it’s best.
It’s more than fatalistic pseudo-happiness.
It’s reckoning with our own humanity,
diving in to why we crave ideals with such a fierce passion,
reminding ourselves that Life will grow us more than our Ideals ever could have.

‘Cause here’s the secret Bilbo didn’t know at the beginnng of his Adventure; only at the end:
he wasn’t going to be the same hobbit when he returned to the Shire a year later.
He came back with quite the Story, yes, & a trunk full of treasure;
but the treasure within him out-weighed all of that.

He came home
wiser,
less sheltered,
more confident & courageous,
empathetic in places where he’d been stony,
warm in places where he’d been cold,
with true comrades & brothers when he’d had only acquaintances.

Oh he had scars too.
He watched friends die,
clawed his way through some nighmarish situations that probably left him with PTSD,
& escaped death by the buttons on his waistcoat.

But he lived.

He made it out to tell the tale & he found himself better off than if he’d stayed home in his cozy armchair, pocket handkerchief & all.

Nobody’s getting out of here without scars, lovely humans, so it’s folly to live like we will;
to cling to Ideals & fight desperately for an existence insulated against all discomfort & hard situations.
& it’s not about living so you’ll have a story to tell; it’s about what happens inside of you along the way.

After all, that’s what Christ is most interested in. As a wise man once said, He has things to do inside us that we’re not interested in so He gets our attention & goes to work,
chipping away at the misshapen stones in our hearts,
swinging open the shutters,
wiping out dusty corners,
dismantling crooked walls,
& re-fashioning us to look more like Him.

It’s a messy, painful business & we’d much rather it didn’t happen,
but He’s not here to cater to our Ideals;
He’s here to see us safely to Heaven,
whatever it takes 🖤

Sometimes men hold onto their dreams so tight the dream begins to smother them.
But they cannot let it go–it would kill them to let it go–so they kill it.
Their own dream ~
ALEXANDER MORTIMER
these war-torn hands // emily hayse