The List-Maker and the Long Road

I have a teenager who makes lists.

Not the practical kind—grocery, chores, pack for the trip—but the aspirational kind. Lists about her future. About who she will be. Where she will live. What will finally make her happy. Lists that assume a neat sequence of steps, each one leading to the next, until—ta da!—life clicks into place. She talks a lot about a perfect and wonderful life will be when she achieves those goals.

And sometimes, watching her write yet another list, I catch myself wondering: Where did I go wrong? How did my child come to believe so deeply in what psychologists call the arrival fallacy—the idea that once we reach the next milestone, the next destination, the next version of ourselves, life will finally make sense?

Then, if I’m honest, I realize exactly where she got it.

I can totally see the appeal. I do it too.

I tell myself: If only… Once this season settles, once this uncertainty resolves, then I’ll be able to breathe.

My lists just look more grown-up. More practical. But they’re still lists that pin my hope on a future moment instead of the life unfolding right now.

As a pastor, I know better—or at least, I know this struggle is ancient. Scripture reminds us again and again that God’s people have always wrestled with this temptation.

The Israelites were convinced that freedom from Egypt would solve everything. “If only we had died by the hand of God in Egypt,” they say in the wilderness, already nostalgic for a place of bondage (Exodus 16). Surely the Promised Land would be the place where fear disappeared and faith came easily. Except—even after arriving—there were still giants, still conflicts, still hard choices.

King David believed becoming king would bring peace. Instead, his life was marked by heartbreak, moral failure, and family turmoil. Solomon chased wisdom, wealth, and accomplishment, only to conclude, “Vanity of vanities… all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

Even the disciples weren’t immune. They followed Jesus faithfully, but they kept assuming the next moment would be the one that made it all make sense. Surely once Jesus took power. Surely once the resurrection happened. Surely once the kingdom arrived in full. And yet the risen Christ meets them not with arrival, but with movement: Go. Keep going.

The biblical story doesn’t move from confusion to clarity and stop there. It moves from call to journey to deeper call. Over and over again.

We are never really “there.”

That’s a hard truth for a teenager who wants her lists to function like contracts with the future. But it’s also a needed reminder for a pastor who sometimes believes stability, security, or clarity is just one more step away.

Jesus never says, “Once you arrive, you can stop.” Instead, he says, “Follow me.” Follow—present tense. Ongoing. Relational. A road that unfolds one step at a time.

So when I look at my daughter and her lists—her beautiful, earnest, sometimes exhausting lists—I try to remember that this is part of her journey. And mine. My job is not to tear up her lists or shame her hope. It’s to gently remind both of us that no milestone will ever carry the weight of meaning we ask it to bear.

Life will not finally make sense once we reach the next destination.

But meaning will be found in the walking.

In the questioning.

In the becoming.

The good news—ancient and still true—is that God does not wait for us at the finish line. God walks with us on the road.

And that, it turns out, is where life actually happens.