I imagine this journey began in elementary school in subtle ways, but when I think about when my active pursuit of my ultimate purpose began, I'd say it probably started around middle school and high school.
Middle school was a pivotal transitional period for me as God began turning my world upside down from my sheltered elementary school life, and as I began to be curious about this God who wanted a personal relationship with me, not just a girl who obediently showed up at church every week to learn about the Bible and participate in a broader community.
High school was a period where I started putting the things I was learning about following Jesus into practice, recognizing my own shortcomings, and experimenting with spiritual disciplines to help me grow into whatever kind of person God wanted me to be. But this also became a difficult period where I began to build a duplicitous identity around my perfectionistic and legalistic tendencies, insecurities around my weaknesses in the face of others, denial of self-righteousness, and placing my worth in how busy I was or how I could push through my unhealthy patterns of overworking.
It also didn't help that I never saw myself as one who had a particularly strong passion around one skill, hobby, or interest throughout my whole life. So I always worked hard at everything I thought was important and committed myself to, but felt like I was always short-changed of greatness because I only ended up being average or just above average in a lot of things as opposed to one thing. I somehow believed the paradigm that in order to be great and fulfill my ultimate purpose in the world, I needed to find my passion around one thing and do all that I could to master it.
I carried this paradigm with me through college, even as God began to push the expand the boundaries of my world even further and as He empowered me to begin to break down the unhealthy duplicitous identity I had created for myself.
It was only within the last year or two that God got my attention in presenting a different paradigm to me. My spiritual director asked me the question, Why are you so fixated on the idea that in order to be great, you need to be passionate about just one thing? What if you have been given passion around many interests, gifts, talents, and skills that God wants you to share all of them with others?'
It had never occurred to me to think about passion this way, or to see this as a valid way of thinking about my calling, vocation, or purpose. I've been wrestling with it ever since.
I bring up this topic because I had the chance to introduce our Friday night meeting (aka Large Group) series on purpose at RIT, and it seemed like God was inviting me to introduce this topic to students by sharing a little glimpse of my journey so far and the things I have been learning and wrestling with recently about my own purpose in life.
The main thing that arose for me in preparation was the idea of how our purpose is so closely tied to our identity. InterVarsity has a vision and a purpose, and I used the common definitions of distinguishing these two terms to establish the grounds for what exploring our purpose could look like. I define our purpose as an explanation of 'why we exist,' and our vision as 'what success looks like if we live out our purpose.'
Since I define 'purpose' as, 'why we exist,' it exemplifies how closely our purpose is tied with our identity, and so in looking for our individual 'purpose' in life, we need to ask ourselves: "Who or what defines our sense of purpose?" Or another way to phrase it is: "Where does our sense of purpose come from?" That is what I wanted students to walk away with.
I wanted the Christians in the room to really assess if the way they were living their life reflected their purpose of loving God and loving people, or if their life was being driven by some other temptation that the world offers (e.g. power, money, relationships/sex, approval, fear of something). And I wanted those who would not consider themselves followers of Jesus to assess where their source of purpose seemed to be leading them.
I still do not know what my ultimate purpose is in life. But I'm growing more and more at peace with the idea that I may never know, and that I shouldn't spend a ton of emotional, mental, or physical energy being worried about that. My purpose is to love God and love people and to put my efforts and energy towards figuring out what that means for me as a uniquely made human being who is beautifully made in the image of God Himself. I need to familiarize myself with hearing the voice of God and obeying Him, and that, my friends, takes enough energy in and of itself.
