Fall in Love with Your Purpose :: Day 6 {And a Giveaway from Holley Gerth}

My struggle with purpose started when I was a single woman.  If you asked me what I wanted to “be when I grew up” I told you a wife and a mother.  Period.  The end.  No more questions asked.  The answer was the same at ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and now thirty-five.

There is no doubt that God put these desires in me.  They never went away even when I asked for him to change them.  But it’s hard to be a wife and mother without a husband and children, and that I had no control over. I felt like a displaced wanderer not really knowing who I was or what I was supposed to be doing.  My reality kept me in a box from being who I was created to be.

I even chose my degrees based on wanting to be a wife and mother.  I became a teacher with the logic that teachers are home at 3:30 and have summers off.  Little did I know that teachers are rarely home before 5:00 and then bring work home.  It’s the same type job as any other.  Plus little prayer went into my choice of profession, and I didn’t consider things like my personality type or spiritual gifts or what God wanted me to do.  So for thirteen years now I’ve been in a job that I suspect God would not have originally chosen for me had I asked him.

Countless days these words would mutter inside my head, “What is my purpose?  Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing?  I have a job that is not me, I am alone, and I have no one to love and take care of. God, what is my purpose?”

I know I’m not alone in this because I get emails from all of you, single friends, and you say the same thing.  Your heart yearns to be a homemaker, and being single makes you feel stifled and pushed down, unable to fulfill the desires in your heart.

This past year my struggle with purpose came to an all time rock bottom.  Even though I am married, I still do not know what I’m supposed to be doing.  I know teaching isn’t it.  And we do not have children.  So there are still hollow places in my heart.

But God began to teach me about purpose through these ten words that hang on our refrigerator.  They’ve hung there for a while, but only recently have I grasped them.  I wrote them on this index card after hearing a pastor say them in a sermon one time.  It’s funny how God uses his wisdom when we’re ready for it.

Notice the two words “to be”.  My purpose is “to be” not “to do”. I worry and ponder what I am supposed to be “doing” in my life – serving a husband, changing diapers, teaching – when instead God wants me to just “be” in whatever life circumstance I am in so that my life can point others to Him.  As Christians isn’t that ultimately our only purpose anyway? To bring people to Christ? Whether it’s our family, friends, coworkers, or strangers on the street?

I want an easy answer.  I want everything I want to be here and now.  But I’m afraid that even then I may miss my true purpose unless I realize what it is now.

Sweet single friends, your purpose is “to be” in order to bridge a way Jesus.  Meditate on that today, and Fall in Love with Your Purpose.