Brave, Anyway

Tag: purpose

  • Purposes

    Purposes

    Only two months remaining in the year of purpose. At the beginning of this year, I was a little worried to focus on a word. While I hoped that I might have some sort of epiphany about my place on the planet, I also wondered if I should set careful expectations given how the year of freedom went.

    What I think about purpose has changed this year. Specifically three things.

    1. If we spend all our time focused on one big thing, like a job or something we might do, we risk spending months or even years thinking we don’t have a purpose or we’ve missed our purpose.

    2. We have an opportunity to live with purpose every day. If we waste time and energy on seeking one big thing, we’ll miss thousands of chances to make a difference in our world.

    3. Time and healing are the key ingredients to understanding the purpose of things, people and events in our lives.

    When something crappy inevitably happens, we can spend a lot of time caught up in whys. Or even what is the purpose of this? I think the better question to focus on is what is my purpose in this? Is it to take action, learn, pray, listen, bring peace, raise hell, set an example?

    Our purpose is not about one thing. It’s a thousand things in a thousand moments. We can have totally different purposes in moments 30 minutes apart. And our purpose in one season can change for the next season. My overarching purpose in the last decade has been to provide stability and a firm foundation for the girls, but as they are getting older now I can see that this purpose is winding down.

    I am excited about a new season where I might have a little space for things I’ve always loved or been interested in – to explore what my purpose might be in them and to explore what purpose they might have in me. Things like getting more involved in the community, advocacy, and working the polls on election days.

    However, as I am firmly middle-aged entering this next phase, purposes will now need to be between 6:30 am and 9 pm. I cannot even fake being at my best at midnight.

    A year or so ago I watched a sermon by Dharius Daniels and he said something I knew was for later and saved in a note on my phone: Your uniqueness will feel like awkwardness until you get to a season where God shows you its relevance. Another way to think about that might be your uniqueness will feel like awkwardness until you get to a season where God shows you its purpose. What if the things we sometimes think make us strange are the things we need to lean into so we can really fulfill our purpose(s)?

    Life changes. Purposes change. With each purpose fulfilled, our happiness grows and the puzzle that we are gets closer to finished, or whole. And suddenly one day in the middle of a purpose the person always staring back at us on Zoom is stronger, wiser, and braver.

    Sometimes I wonder if Zoom is my purpose.
  • Purposefully Seeking Purpose

    Purposefully Seeking Purpose

    My word for this year is purpose.

    I’m not attached to it, and unlike other years I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about it. It doesn’t feel right and I just don’t love it. In fact, whenever I hear or encounter it I move to focus on something else. Maybe I simply haven’t been ready for it.

    Much of the last year has felt like a trip through the car wash, gear in neutral, with all sorts of things happening around me. But now I’m driving out, rolling down windows, tentatively driving into warm sunshine after a pressure wash.

    I can focus on things that used to be painful, and I am no longer afraid to let my mind wander. So I found myself annoyed this week when I couldn’t get a song that I haven’t heard anytime recently out of my head: The Byrds singing Turn Turn Turn is just awful.

    To everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn turn turn…turn it off! And for the first time I realized that to everything there is a season is a biblical thing and I went searching for it. And to my surprise, the word purpose is also there.

    KJV Ecclesiastes 3 says “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

    We have a purpose. Each of us. Figuring out our purpose can be a daunting thing, and I think a lot of us never do it. What’s equally important I’m starting to think, and perhaps not always as big to tackle, is looking for and seeing the purpose of events and seasons in our lives. What is our purpose in them? What is their purpose in us?

    Proud VCU Momma!

    There are visuals all around me marking the passing of seasons, and the passing of purposes. The bracelet around my gear shift tells the story of a college Mom now, after so many years highlighting childhood cancer awareness. The walls in the room over the garage tell the story of a toddler playroom then paint projects then pajama parties then PlayStation competitions – the seasons of childhood and the seasons of motherhood.

    But now a new season is approaching, and with it a new purpose. Maybe it’s been there all along, and I’m just now approaching it. Or maybe it’s been pursuing me and I’ve been running from it.

    My first lesson in purpose in this season is that I have to purposefully seek purpose. (And I’ve already lost the first quarter – yikes!) My second lesson is that it sometimes takes a new season to reveal the purpose of events or people or things in your past ones. For things to come together. To fulfill the promise in Romans 8 that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

    One Dad’s Bible at another Dad’s desk.

    Thankful for nudges, crappy songs, old bibles with new lessons, old desks made new and glorious, and old me made new.