Closer Is the New Forward

Time used to look like a line that started on the left and moved straight to the right. That’s what all the history wall charts and foldout timelines taught me. When I was growing up, I bought into the idea that you could identify a point in the distance and get there from here. I believed doing the right things in the right order meant moving forward and arriving where you wanted to be.

That concept of progress works for a lot of people. Until it doesn’t. Sometimes you take all the prerequisite courses, and you still don’t get accepted into the program. Sometimes infertility, miscarriages, financial crises, or cancer happen. For these situations, there is no right time. They happen to the people who were doing all the right things, taking all the right steps to move forward. They happen to the people who prayed. The people who waited until their wedding night. The people who saved up. The people who ate right and exercised.

Those people we’re cheering for, the ones we so desperately want to see move forward, get stalled. They get so stuck that our best intentions and inspirational quotes can’t unstick them. And sometimes, we are them. We’re the ones who are inexplicably, embarrassingly stuck. Or worse, we’re going through the motions, but we keep seeing the same scenery again and again, and there’s no sign we’re getting anywhere.

Not so long ago, I wanted nothing more than to move toward the life God had for me. After twenty years of praying and preparing, my husband and I followed God’s leading, sold everything, and launched into a life of missionary service overseas. When we came back to the United States sick, financially depleted, and suffering from post-traumatic stress, very few people wanted to hear what God had done in and through us. All they wanted to know is how we would move forward.

The shame and contempt we faced during that time drove me to examine my idea of moving forward, toward a moment when we would finally arrive, with a more critical eye. That’s when a simple word caught my attention.

One of the many Hebrew words for “path” has a circular or cyclical aspect to it. It depicts a circular groove that’s been worn over time. It’s a word picture I deeply resented. For a long time, I resented the cyclical path God has led me on. Repeating parts of my journey felt like drudgery. It brought forth shame about where I was, and thoughts of how much farther ahead I “should” have been bubbled up to the surface.

But now, I’m becoming convinced that this cyclical path offers a more compassionate way to visualize time and progress.

Let’s say we’re both standing on that straight line, and I have kids, and you don’t. It’s easy to place me further to the right, ahead of you on the path. You might feel as if you need to catch up. But if we’re both traveling a circular path, moving through the same cycle of fertility, it’s obvious that I was once barren, and will be again. The day may come when you embrace children and my arms are empty. Either way, we’re traveling the path as peers.

Our lives are full of these cycles, and such cyclical paths were the foundation of biblical culture—weekly cycles of work and rest, seasonal cycles of planting and harvesting, annual cycles of feasts. Every year God’s people would literally follow the same rutted track they walked to Jerusalem the year before to celebrate together. But it wasn’t drudgery. Repeating the cycle together strengthened their connections with God and with each other.

[Tweet “Sometimes we need to revisit or even relive parts of our story we’d rather forget.”] It’s taken God’s bringing me full circle, back to my deepest wounds, for me to embrace the truth. God brought me “back” there so I could go “forward” in wholeness.

I’m just beginning to grasp the difference between being stuck in a cycle of futility and being led in a cycle of increasing healing and intimacy (even though they can feel similar). Futility doesn’t embrace who God is or join what he’s doing. When God leads, every time we repeat the cycle, it’s new—because we’re new. It’s never a waste.

I don’t think in terms of moving forward anymore, or at least not in the same way. I’m more interested in moving closer to the God who travels this cyclical path with me. The gap between us is either narrowing or widening with every step. Sometimes taking even a small step closer opens up a breathtaking panorama. Other times it means climbing down into a pit. I’m learning to savor closeness and value it more than any direction or destination.

Hannah Kallio is an Israeli who’s at home in France, Italy, and Minnesota. A homemaker who had it all, gave it all away, and lived out of a backpack. She loves one man, 5 kids, and the crazy story God is writing in their lives even more than palm trees, ancient ruins, and deepest dark chocolate. She writes, coaches, speaks, sings, and creates her guts out at hannahkallio.org.