not just a destination

At 25 years old, I finally feel like I'm beginning to learn a few things...or at least one thing.  Over and over lately, I have been struck with how much our lives truly are about process, a continual doing, trying, failing, realizing what went wrong, and trying again.
We're so quick to get caught up in the destination and forget the beauty of the process.  Everything within us wants to arrive at a certain place within a certain time.  We forget how valuable the process is:  that sometimes we actually gain more from it, then we do from our point of arrival.  I had one of those moments today (I have to admit I have them far more often than I should...).
Kade and I were frustrated with one another today...it wasn't a big deal at all, just one of those times that comes with being two imperfect people in a relationship that is designed to sanctify.  The frustrations aren't the point, but rather some of my thinking within them.
In those moments I am so quick to be so frustrated with myself.  Everything within me begins listing off everything I've done wrong and continue to do wrong, everything I haven't gotten right yet, and everything I wonder if I'll ever be able to get right in relationship.  In my mind, I feel like we're doomed to failure because we aren't where "we're supposed to be."
That's not the point, and if I try to make it the point, I completely lose sight of all the Lord has in store for us.  The point is that those moments sanctify, they break off the things that keep us from being like the Lord and help us to come more into His image.  Without them and the process that they are, there is no way to get to the point of arrival.
That hit me as we sat together this evening, enjoying the beauty around us and the fact that we had been restored.  All of a sudden, it wasn't about reaching a certain place...it was about the fact that, through the Lord's process, we had each been made a little better, a little more like Him.  No, we're not exactly where we need to be yet...but that's not the point.  The point is that we're on our way.