Before or After?

My mind often has weird discussion going on throughout the day.  I don't know if it thinks it needs to be sharpening itself always, but I find myself debating, analyzing, and arguing about answers to questions I don't even think matter.

Strangely though, it is these internal debates/discussions that cause so much life development and often produces thoughts that sometime later will turn into words spoken in conversation that mean something to someone.

I had one of those debates for about half of my day awake today.  But I suppose I asked for it.  I went to a funeral this afternoon because I often find myself having meaningful thoughts and experiences in seeing people remember, celebrate, grieve, reflect and share about parts of life we so often keep hidden.  My thoughts didn't relate to this particular funeral in any clear way, but they happened nonetheless.

For roughly 10 hours I debated...is the current state of my life better described as a "before picture" or an "after picture?"

I said the conversations sometimes start with questions that don't matter right?  Does it matter in any consequentially important way that I even ask the question?  Do I need to know?  Are these categories that anyone else finds the need to put me in, or I feel the need to discover?

...but my mind won't let the question go.  Once it infiltrates, it begs for an answer, or at least a well thought through defense on why the question is unanswerable ( i never win an argument that says answering is unimportant )

So think about it for just a second.  Before?  or After? 

About to start the journey towards the goal, towards completeness, towards change...or arrived, completed, the result of effort?

Thinking primarily in terms of future hopes...or enjoying the results of healthy past?

Worried about future problems...or frustrated with misguided past?

Before.................After

10 hours...and I want to refuse to answer.  I'm close to convincing myself it is unanswerable, but my mind will make me play mental gymnastics for at least a little longer (I mean, I do have to finish typing this and all).

Before:  I am incomplete.  I hope that most of life is still ahead of me.  I don't feel capable of accomplishing much of what I dream for myself or others dream for me.  I believe I'm still highly moldable, highly shapable, highly in need of reform.  I feel like there is a lot of unused effort.  I feel unsatisfied with some parts of the man I am...not in a depressed way, but I know there is better.  I don't want this to be all I end up being.

After:  I am a new creation.  I am different than I was heading towards.  I've been made new.  I have spent numerous seasons of life in highly devoted intentional development and find myself capable, useful and energized because of the transformation that has taken place.  I refuse to regress, have found awesome identity and don't believe that can be taken from me.

Before:  Tomorrow is a new day, and not taking more steps forward is failure.

After:  Yesterday just ended.  My conscious is clean and I feel generally confident that I lived it the way I was supposed to.

Before:  If all of my private world was public, everyone would know there is work to be done.

After:  People's thoughts don't matter (often including my own), Christ says I have been made complete in Him.

Before:  I'm 5+ years into a marriage that has just begun to scratch the surface of what being "one flesh" means.

After:  I can't imagine being more in love with Jenny (that is until tomorrow).

Before:  The influence I think I can have in partnering with God and the calling I believe He has placed on my life is incomplete.

After:  The influence of others have had in my life, partinering with God, have made me the person I am today.

Before........After.

Seriously, 10hours...and all I can come to is the "cop-out" answer of "in progress."

Every other argument has a counterpoint.  Family, friends, faith...they can all argue both sides.  I can't label myself "Before" or "After" and yet I'll continue to debate the answer for many more hours, days, weeks.