Purpose

Steph here.

I was thinking and journaling the other day about purpose. Now, let me start by saying that as an INFJ personality type , I do a lot of thinking about deep subjects and analyzing about my place in the world (if you guys haven’t noticed already). This isn’t rare for me, this need to process a deep/complex subject, but sometimes it’s more intense than others. When it gets more intense, I have a hard time thinking about much else; I just want to (and often do) sit down and think and write and hash it out with myself and God and consider all the angles of what I (and others) know about the subject until I come to some sort of conclusion.

This week and last week I’ve had this incredible mental itch going on over the subject of purpose: our purpose in life as human beings and how that impacts my life.

Maybe it’s because I desperately miss the ocean, so I’ve been talking to Lindsey about moving near the ocean in a few years and that gets me thinking about our future. Maybe it’s because I’m graduating from college in 2 months and that gets me thinking about being able to focus 100 percent on the things I really want more time and energy to be able to do. But in all reality…I think about the future often; I know what I want to do with the time that I’ll have post diploma; and I think that most of it is that I just honestly have this constant drive to “live up to my full potential” (as the portrait says). And that makes me wonder (sometimes more than others) if I’m missing something, if I’m really being the best version of me, if I’m really fulfilling my purpose during my time on earth.

I constantly miss the ocean so much…

Honestly, this translates into a very restless me sometimes. I’m a wanderer at the core…always considering the world around me, always looking for the deeper side of things, always searching for inspiration and truth and new and different and Divine. SO, this is why I sat down the other day to journal about purpose…because I really want to balance my restless/wanderer/seeker side with a deep, abiding peace of mind. But peace of mind is hard to have when your mind is constantly going with all the previously mentioned thoughts…I mean seriously, I’m the kind of person who could change what she “does,” where she lives, and where she goes every year (at least). So I had to find some sort of constant in my purpose as a human being that I could return to, hang on, ground myself with, no matter where I decide to wander or what I decide to invest my time in.

After much writing, some researching, and a lot of considering, here’s the conclusion I came to:

I am valuable because I am a living breathing human being created with a heart, soul, mind, and body into which God can pour His love and through which His love can flow to affect others and bring glory to Himself (in other words I have this huge cavity in me that love can fill and that love can affect me and those around me as I turn it on them). This capacity to be loved and, therefore, love others is constant, never changing. I am constantly that alive human being who can experience love and be a vessel of love. THIS is my constant purpose, my ultimate goal here on earth: to be loved and allow that love to flow out of me to impact others. 

Doesn’t this make sense when we, then, think of other passions and purposes in life? If a person decides he wants to be a teacher, but he gets cancer and must leave work to lie in a hospital bed, his ability to be loved and to let love affect others through him doesn’t change. He still has purpose and can still fulfill that purpose. Even a person who is brain dead can be loved and that love can flow through them back to others: purpose.

So, regardless of what each one of us chooses to do with our time, our lives, our careers, our education, we all have a constant, ultimate purpose for being alive. And in those moments where we aren’t sure what will come next, who to date or marry, what job to take, what will happen in the future, or, even, what we really want, our purpose stays the same, grounding us, giving us a constant in the midst of lives that are filled with questions and ups and downs and yes’s and no’s.

This brings me peace of mind. I’m not missing out on the ultimate goal unless I don’t open my heart to receive love and let that love flow from me to others. Everything else is secondary. If I wake up in the morning and open my heart to love, then I’m being the best me I can be. And that, my friends, is a beautiful, joyful, wonderful thing–Purpose above and beyond all others.

I’ll always be a wanderer, a seeker, a dreamer, an adventurer, and I’m ok with that because love will always keep me going in the right direction.