The Road can not be made by wishing. It is made by walking.

​I've spent some time this morning reading about the people of Israel and their 40 years wandering in the wilderness with Moses.

I was struck, really, how often these folks, who had endured hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, continued being slaves to themselves through their lack of faith and their lack of willingness to take on the day to day struggles in front of them on the way to freedom.

As I thought about that - I thought about me. How I've spent so much of my life being a slave to myself through my lack of faith and lack of willingness to take on the day to day struggles in front of me on the way to freedom.

What does a "lack of willingness to take on the day to day struggles in front of me" look like?

It looks like wishing struggles away. It looks like whining about struggles. It looks like talking about struggles instead of doing something about them.

This year, my word is rocket. I borrowed the word from the song Say I Won't. In that song there are these words:

Today
It all begins
I'm seeing my life for the very first time
Through a different lens

Yesterday
I didn't understand
Driving 35 with the rocket inside
Didn't know what I had

While I've been waiting to live
My life's been waiting on me

This morning, it occurs to me, that while life is up ahead waiting on me, life is also getting aggravated with me. Life is listening to me wish and whine and talk, and life is saying - maybe life is even screaming - would you JUST walk already.

Would you just shut up and start walking toward your freedom?

This year, I made a commitment that when I feel myself settling into places of wishing, when I get mired in whining, or when I find myself talking about moving ahead instead of actually moving ahead, I start walking.

Many days, that looks like a very literal walk.

And you know what, some days it actually feels like I'm getting somewhere. Some days, it actually feels like I'm riding a rocket instead of roaming around the same city block I've been roaming around for far too long - never going more than 35 mph.

The Israelites finally caught the rocket that took them into the promised land. It didn't happen on their timeline. It didn't come as easy as they had wished it would. But it came.

But only after they started walking and stopped talking.

You can wake up one day and realize you've spent a lifetime talking. Then you take a step, and realize one step actually gets your further than decades of talking.

That's freedom.