Purpose….

So I’m taking the Bible Stude “For Women Only”. I highly recommend it, and no, I am totally not important enough to get paid for plugs or anything, so you can trust that this entire website really is just my own opinion without any kickbacks.

Anyway, For Women Only is written by Shaunti Feldhahn, and it’s a guide to understanding why/how men work, and what you can do to make your marriage work way better. She came and spoke at my church last weekend, and I had a groundbreaking moment where I honestly sat stunned at the connection.

She talks about God’s purpose for us, and look, I’ll be honest, I hear blahblahblah and my eyes glaze over when I hear that. It is SO hard for me to understand that each person has a specific purpose. I just…can’t get it. My mind can’t wrap around it. I see His gifts in my friends, don’t get me wrong. But me? I just don’t see it.

And then the stunning moment – she spoke of inanimate objects. How every single item, every material, every object on Earth has a purpose. A hat, a shoe, a chair. And it hit me instantly; operating with the thought process above, I was saying that I, this complex, intricately designed human being, had less purpose than a hat. That’s ridiculous. Humans are certainly more complex than a hat (well, maybe not moreso than this hat, though I digress). And then the ultimate kicker; that when you are used for an unintended purpose, it doesn’t work. Hats don’t make good shoes, and chairs don’t make good nail polish, and swans don’t make good dresses.

I was essentially saying that I had less purpose than a hat. A HAT, Y’ALL.

And that most of all, that “having it all” is a myth. It is a falsity that you can do it all and nothing will suffer. Consider it a jack of all trades, master of none. I think that way about attorneys. Our Firm is specialized and I will say that our attorneys are BRILLIANT. Why? They are specialized. They refer out some cases that I’m sure they could litigate, but choose not to because someone else has more practical experience on the subject. Frankly, I don’t want to hire an attorney that does family law and criminal law and trademark law and personal injury law and social security law and copyright law and securities and patent, and, and…. I want one that knows the law inside and out about MY issue. Though obviously that’s a different kind of purpose, it is an example that was easy for me to understand.

And it was then that I realized that when I am in breakdown-mode, it is specifically because I have stretched myself too thin and am not using myself for what I was created for. I have realized that I have a tendency to “busy” myself with things specifically so that I don’t have to tackle the really hard stuff. Some people find that staying in The Word is easy; I find it nearly impossible. I have an alarm that reminds me daily to read just one devotional, and I consistently ignore it. Why is it so much easier to read the junk instead?

So I finally get the idea that every single individual has a specific purpose, and that if, perhaps, my life is overwhelming and difficult to deal with, it’s simply because I am trying to wear my pencil as a shoe. You see, I’m not meant to do it all; the world will not end because of a missed field trip or because I didn’t answer that email as fast as I should have or because I didn’t make dinner for no other reason than because I just didn’t want to.

I don’t yet know my purpose, what His plans are for me, but I know that if I bury myself in trying to ‘do it all’, that I’ll likely miss it. And if there’s anything that I don’t want to miss, it’s whatever it is I’m meant for.

…And I promise, the next entry won’t be so heavy 🙂

1 comment

    • Cristen on February 23, 2013 at 12:43 am

    We touched on this at church recently, and I had a similar epiphany. I’m going to look into this study.

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