Chapter Six

I know less about the destination than I once thought I needed to. And somehow, there is peace in that.

There was a time when I would have been rather uncomfortable writing a chapter called Looking Ahead without immediately producing a plan.

Plans have always come naturally to me.

Where are we going?

What are we building?

What happens next?

What are the milestones?

How will we know when we’ve arrived?

Useful questions.

I still ask them.

But these days, I hold the answers rather more loosely.

Because some of the most beautiful things in my life today were never on any plan I wrote.

I couldn’t have planned the tapestry.

I certainly wouldn’t have chosen every thread.

And yet here I am.

Looking ahead with more hope than certainty.

Perhaps that’s enough.

A different horizon

I’m excited about the future.

Genuinely excited.

There are businesses still to build and others I hope eventually won’t need me.

There are rooms I’d love to speak in and conversations I haven’t had yet.

There are books I hope to write.

Places I’d love to see.

People I haven’t met.

Men I hope will discover something about who they are and, more importantly, Whose they are.

There are ideas that currently exist as little more than notes, prayers and half-finished conversations.

And there is this place.

The Front Porch.

I don’t entirely know what it will become.

I’m rather glad about that.

Because perhaps not everything meaningful needs to begin with an outcome.

Sometimes you simply prepare the ground.

You build the porch.

Put out the chairs.

Open the door.

And trust that the right conversations will find their way there.

Enough

One of the questions I’m increasingly interested in is:

What is enough?

Enough success.

Enough money.

Enough recognition.

Enough work.

Enough growth.

We live in a culture extraordinarily good at teaching us to want more and remarkably poor at helping us recognise when we already have enough.

I’m learning. Enough doesn’t mean a lack of ambition.

I still dream.

I still build.

I still get excited about possibilities.

But ambition feels different when it no longer has to prove anything.

You can pursue something because it is worth pursuing rather than because you need it to validate you.

You can succeed without becoming your success.

You can fail without becoming your failure.

You can enjoy what God places in your hands without desperately clutching it.

And perhaps, eventually, you can give some of it away.

Open hands

That’s how I want to approach whatever comes next.

With open hands.

There are things I hope for.

I hope to write more.

I hope to speak more.

I hope to help build businesses that become stronger than their founders.

I hope to see men rediscover identity, purpose and faith.

I hope to invest more of my life in people.

I hope Maria and I travel, explore, laugh enormously, collect stories and occasionally spend far too long over dinner somewhere beautiful.

I hope our home continues to be a place where people feel welcome.

I hope there are countless evenings on the balcony when absolutely nothing productive happens.

And I hope I remain sufficiently present to recognise just how extraordinary those ordinary moments really are.

But hopes aren’t demands.

God doesn’t owe me the future I’ve imagined.

I’ve lived enough life now to know that some doors open and others close.

Plans change.

Seasons end.

People arrive.

People leave.

The path bends.

And occasionally what first looks like an interruption becomes the very thing that changes everything.

So I’ll make plans.

I’ll dream.

I’ll build.

And I’ll try to keep my hands open.

The road I can’t see

Perhaps that’s what faith increasingly looks like to me.

Not certainty.

Trust.

There is a difference.

Certainty wants to know what happens next.

Trust knows enough about the One leading to keep walking when it doesn’t.

That doesn’t make every decision easy.

It doesn’t remove disappointment.

It doesn’t mean every prayer gets the answer I hoped for.

It simply means the unanswered questions don’t frighten me quite as much as they once did.

I’ve seen too many threads eventually make sense.

I’ve stepped on too many stones that only became a path when I looked backwards.

I’ve experienced too much grace in places where I thought the story had gone wrong.

So when I look toward the horizon now, I don’t need to see everything.

I just want to remain faithful to what is in front of me.

And perhaps that’s why you’re here

There’s a temptation when telling our stories to make them neat.

Beginning.

Struggle.

Breakthrough.

Happy ending.

Life rarely behaves so politely.

Mine certainly hasn’t.

This Journey doesn’t end because the story is finished.

It ends because we’ve reached the edge of what I can tell you today.

Tomorrow will add another thread.

Another conversation.

Another ordinary moment.

Perhaps another unexpected turn.

And yours will too.

So if you’ve wandered through these pages looking for a formula, I’m afraid I haven’t got one.

But perhaps you’ve found something else.

Permission to stop needing the entire picture.

Permission to be unfinished.

Permission to appreciate where you are while still wondering where you’re going.

Permission to trust that God may be doing something in your life that you cannot yet see.

And permission simply to take the next faithful step.

The journey continues

I don’t know exactly where this journey leads.

And for once, I don’t feel the need to finish that sentence.

There is work to do.

People to love.

Things to build.

Places to explore.

Stories to write.

Questions to ask.

A God to trust.

And, I hope, plenty of evenings when the light turns gold through the trees and there is time for one more conversation.

So I’ll keep learning.

Keep listening.

Keep noticing.

Keep trusting.

And keep taking the next faithful step.

If our paths cross somewhere along the way…

I’ll be grateful.