Finding Your Purpose

Picking Crab Apples

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One day this fall, a student asked me for a spare paper bag so he could pick some crab apples from the tree outside my campus office building. I was puzzled by his request because I never knew crab apples were good for anything (besides dropping on the sidewalk and smushing up under my shoes!) The student surprised me by telling me he was going to use them to make jam.

He explained that the crab apple is just a smaller apple. No one thinks to eat them because we like things that are big and pretty. What a wonderful new insight! I thought the tree outside my building was just ornamental, only meant to be enjoyed for the pretty pink blossoms in the spring. I have since learned that crab apples can be eaten and have the exact same nutritional value as regular apples, just in a smaller package.

How can this old adage, “good things come in small packages” apply to our faith lives? What immediately comes to mind is the parable of the mustard seed:

“He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)

A podcast on Contemplative At Home calls this “a tiny parable about a tiny thing.” Jesus wants us to see that small beginnings can lead to powerful results. Things that start small can grow and spread. We often discount these tiny movements in our hearts, because we live in a world that celebrates everything that is big and bold and extravagant. It’s easy to feel that the way we express our faith is “not enough.” This parable reveals that the seed holds so much hope and possibility. Even the smallest amount of faith can be enough to set you off on your journey towards God. A journey that will blossom and grow, with branches that intertwine with those you encounter along the way.

Equally important as our small bits of faith are our small actions. My encounter with this student picking crab apples also reminded me of the famous quote by Mother Theresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” The world is filled with huge problems and inconceivable amounts of human suffering. It’s hard to believe anything we could do would actually make a difference. Where could we even begin? Well…we begin by doing something small. It may feel insignificant, or woefully inadequate. But the love that accompanies each small act will magnify and warm the hearts of whoever may be receiving the act of kindness. And that’s how it begins to spread. 

Created, Chosen, and Called

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Women of faith tend to put people on pedestals. Biblical figures and saints become images of idealized perfection, in a category all to their own – so high up, we could never reach them.  Even our contemporaries can be raised up to this status.

We compare ourselves to these individuals and come up short. Our acts of faith aren’t dramatic enough. Our pain isn’t severe enough. We’re always going to be “not enough”, because we aren’t seeing ourselves through the loving eyes of God. Our measuring stick always gets in the way. We create these categories in our minds. This group is special and worthy because of their acts of goodness or their noble suffering. They are set apart and I am not a part of that group. I don’t belong there.

It’s so important to see how this pedestal mentality—this super-sized admiration—affects our relationship with God. How it colors how we see ourselves in God’s plan and design. Or more accurately, where we see ourselves in God’s plan. 

Are there times we don’t see ourselves anywhere at all? 

The measuring stick comes out again. We measure the idealized perfection of these saintly figures against “whatever we are.” If you found your way to this blog post today, I want you to believe that you matter! That what you do matters. And the reason I can be so confident in saying this is because of what I call the three c’s.  

God CREATED you.
God CHOSE you.
God CALLED you.

God CREATED you:

The best way to make this shift in our thinking is to begin with pondering our own creation. God created us from the dust and breathed life into us. Genesis 2:7 says “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Isn’t that beautiful? Take a moment to picture the God of Love breathing Spirit into you at the moment of your creation. How could anyone feel small or ordinary or inadequate knowing that? 

We also know that God created us in His own image. Genesis 1:27 says “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  That is no small thing! Our very existence is an intimate act of union with our Creator.

God CHOSE you:

St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4) God chose us. How beautiful! About 20 years ago I attended a retreat (and I’m sorry to say that I no longer remember the name of the speaker,) but she said something that hit me like a bolt of lightning because it had truly never occured to me: “God has a plan and a purpose for you. And He made you exactly the way He needs you to be.” I have never forgotten this quote and I try to incorporate it into almost every retreat I give, particularly to women and young girls.  

“God has a plan and a purpose for you. 
And He made you exactly the way He needs you to be.”

It all but destroys the measuring stick. God’s love doesn’t measure.  It doesn’t tally results or put us in a pecking order. God’s love has no conditions. The rules about who is loveable and who is not are erased. Our God does not compare, but instead offers us a love that is perfect and selfless. It isn’t something we receive only if we deserve it. It’s a gift freely given.

God CALLED you:

What are we being called to do? Who are we being called to be? These aren’t easy questions to answer! A good place to start is by recognizing your gifts. Remember: God made you exactly the way He needs you to be!

In my experience, most women are not good at recognizing our gifts. In fact, some of us could earn an Olympic medal in pointing out our own flaws. But when it comes to knowing what we’re good at…our tongues get tied. Our minds draw a blank. The measuring stick comes out again.  

And so I challenge you today to answer the question: What am I good at? I promise you it’s not arrogance or vanity to ponder this question. It’s a simple acknowledgment of how you’ve been gifted by God. You can express it with a sense of gratitude. If you’re really struggling answering this question, I would suggest that you ask someone you love to answer it.  What am I good at?  You might be surprised at what they tell you.

So the next time you think about the women you have put up on a pedestal, look in the mirror instead, and see yourself with the eyes of God. Repeat these words:

God created ME.
God chose ME.
God called ME.

Background photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash

God At Work in Us

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Embrace the ways in which God is working in you

When looking for purpose in your life, time can feel like an enemy. Is it too late? Can God really be calling me to this new thing at my age? Have I missed my chance? Am I just too old to learn new spiritual tricks?

The answers to these questions are…NO!

People begin new things all the time. My husband didn’t start running until he was 40. He didn’t start playing basketball until a few years after that. I learned to crochet at the age of 51. One of my favorite social media follows—Babs Costello of “Brunch with Babs”—is a 72 year-old grandmother who is now a viral sensation with a best-selling cookbook. 

As we move through life and become entrenched in certain habits, it’s easy to feel that there is less and less room to grow in our spiritual lives. But it’s important to remember that God never stops working in us. We are a work in progress right up until our very last day here on this earth. If we can learn new hobbies or skills later in life, why can’t we learn new ways of praying, new spiritual practices, or new ways of connecting to our loving God?

Resist the temptation to remain stuck wherever you’ve landed in your faith life. Open your heart to God and embrace the ways in which God is working in you. Be willing to follow a path that you might not have imagined for yourself. 

Spiritual growth is the process of getting more in touch with your inner life, your relationship with God, and the workings of your heart. It’s a movement towards wholeness. Our spirituality is not static. It’s a constantly changing experience. It’s different through different stages of life and even from day to day.

How well do you know your own heart? Do you hide from it? Does it keep secrets from you? Do you resist what your heart is feeling, or where it is leading? Take some time to look inward. To examine all the intricate pathways of your heart and your life’s journey. Look for patterns. What can you learn from joyful times, from heartbreak, from confusion and doubt? All of these experiences lead to growth.

Remember, God created the universe and all that lives within it. In the words of William Reiser, S.J. in his book The Potter’s Touch:

“Creation is not yet finished because we are not yet finished. Our particular, individual creations are still taking place with God taking the creative and loving initiative in our souls.” 

Each day is an opportunity to experience ways in which we are being created by our loving God.

I’d love to hear from you! Share a story of how you embraced a new spiritual practice in your life.

Being Loved by God

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My husband is a high school teacher, and for the first fifteen years of his career, he spent his summer break teaching summer school. Over the past few years, he has finally been able to recognize that the break is supposed to be exactly that, a break.  And so he gave up his summer teaching position to really take time in the summer to rest and restore. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how incredibly hard teachers work during the school year in increasingly challenging circumstances!

But what I’ve observed over the past few summers is that my husband has the hardest time taking a day off—and I mean taking it completely off. On summer afternoons he loves to go swimming at our town lake. Or maybe “swimming” isn’t exactly right: he doesn’t do laps or anything. Instead, he prefers to simply float on the water and relax—doing nothing, thinking about nothing in particular. 

But here’s the catch: he won’t go to the lake in the afternoon unless he feels he has “earned” it. He has to do something productive in the morning—planting flowers, moving the lawn, endlessly pulling out weeds—in order to feel right about his lake-lounging in the afternoon.

I’m sure this philosophy makes sense to a lot of people. The relaxation is the reward for the hard work. It’s easy to get swept up into this world of accomplishments and score-keeping. This sense that we have to justify our existence in the world and always be productive. But this way of thinking results in a transactional view of our own worth. To have good things, we must earn it. To feel loved and appreciated, we must deserve it. To be considered a good and worthy person, we must work for it.

If you truly believe that you are a child of God, then this view is terribly misguided! As William Reiser, S.J. writes in his book The Potter’s Touch: 

“We are alive, we exist on the earth for no other reason than this, that we have been loved.” 

You were created to be loved by God. Imagine the freedom in that realization! You weren’t created to produce, labor, contribute, sacrifice, or anything else but simply to receive love. Everything else you do in your life should stem from that fundamental belief.

God loves us unconditionally. That means without conditions! There’s no declaration that begins with the words: “God loves me because…”  Instead, we must only believe: “God loves me.”

We spend so much of our lives trying to prove things about ourselves.

  • I’m successful because I own this many things or I’ve received this many promotions. 
  • I’m well-liked because I have this many friends or social media followers.
  • I’m a good person because I’ve done this many good deeds.  

All of those things are a part of life, but they aren’t the “WHY” of life. Achieving success at work is great, but it’s not why you were put here on this earth. Having friends is important, but it’s not why you were created. Doing good deeds is wonderful, but it’s not your reason for being. 

Your reason for being is to be loved. God created us to love us. We are here to receive that love. What we do with that love is what comes next.

So it’s certainly a worthy effort to reflect on your calling and your purpose. After all…it’s not realistic to float on the lake forever! But the deeds you do should grow out of your existence as a child of God, not be a condition of it. In other words, we aren’t loved by God because we do good things; but rather, experiencing God’s unconditional love makes us want to share and spread that love through our words and deeds. 

So begin each day with this discovery—”I was created to be loved by God!” And see where the day takes you from there.

Finding Purpose in the Journey

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staircase MLK

How often do you find yourself asking the age-old question: What is my purpose in life? We know that God is calling us, just like Jesus called the disciples to come and follow Him, as I wrote about last week. But how do we know what God is calling us to do? Where’s the roadmap…or the specific set of instructions?

I should be honest and say I don’t really have an answer to that question. But I do have a theory. For some reason, God doesn’t choose to reveal Himself to individuals in the same way. I believe those people who hear a more distinct calling—like the 12 disciples—are quite rare.

For reasons beyond our understanding, God wants the rest of us to embark on our journeys without really knowing where we’re headed. In many ways, this “not knowing” becomes the greatest stretch of our faith.   There’s a plaque that used to hang in my old office with the following quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” What better way to show our trust in God than to set out on this blind journey, confident that He will reveal Himself to us when the time is right? That He will reveal our purpose when we’re ready to hear it. So for those of you who come up blank when you ask yourself, what is my purpose in life? It’s ok. Maybe you’re not supposed to know what your purpose is just yet. Maybe it’s enough to say you’ll know it when you see it.

So…what do we do in the meantime?

To quote a popular phrase, “Keep on keepin’ on!” Just because God has chosen not to reveal His plans for you just yet, that’s no reason to go running back to the security of your fishing nets. For now, let the journey become your purpose. Let the journey become your calling. Commit yourself to leaving the seashore and following Jesus, wherever He might lead you. Commit yourself to taking the next step on the staircase. To the belief that Jesus is leading you to your destiny.

The next time you see a spider web, think about—comparatively speaking—how far that spider had to travel to complete the web. If you stretched all the tiny little lines and squares of the web out into a straight line, imagine how long it would be. But a spider doesn’t travel in a straight line. I read this in a book, once, and it really stuck with me: to make a web, a spider must continually return to a center point. Like a compass that always points North, this constant return to center is what enables the spider to create that intricate and beautiful spiral shape we are so familiar with.

So a spider is really taking a series of little journeys, always coming back to center. I challenge and encourage you to do the same. Keep your relationship with God at the center, and venture out on an endless series of little journeys…with each one, learning more about yourself and more about your purpose in life. This allows you to keep moving, even when you don’t have all the answers. And I absolutely believe that’s the way God wants it. He wants us to venture out on the journey without knowing exactly where it will lead. He wants us to be open to it. He wants us to learn, to make mistakes along the way, to keep on keepin’ on. And this becomes so much easier to do when you know you can always come back to the center—to God.

The only thing that God does NOT want is for us to give up the journey entirely. For it’s what happens on this journey that will give our lives purpose.

Leaving Our Nets Behind

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The Fisherman

Matthew 4:18-22 tells the beautiful story of Jesus calling two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew and James and John, to drop their fishing nets and follow him. This reading is one of the gospel stories I remember most distinctly from my childhood. Not because I liked the story—although I did enjoy it—but because something about it made me supremely uncomfortable. It always boggled my mind how quickly those men dropped everything to follow Jesus. Twice Matthew uses the phrase “at once,” suggesting that they didn’t stop to think about it for even a moment.

As a kid, I wasn’t prone to doing anything spontaneously, preferring to think things through before making my move. And so I marveled at how these brothers were able to do that. I often wondered…what else did they leave behind? Their mothers? Sisters? Were they married? Did they have other commitments? If they weren’t fishing, who was providing food for their families? All of these musings really pointed to the one question I couldn’t bring myself to ask—the question that was at the root of my discomfort with this story:

If I was one of those fishermen, and Jesus called me to follow him, would I drop everything “at once” and go? There was a part of me that always wondered if perhaps I wouldn’t be able to do it. That I just didn’t have it in me.

Have you ever felt the same way? That you might be one of those people…clinging to your fishing nets, unable to let them go and follow Jesus. What holds us back? What are the nets that we’ve become tangled up in…that tie us down and prevent us from being free to follow Jesus? It’s important to reflect on this question, for if we can’t identify these nets, we can never be free of them.

I believe the answer can be found not in where we cast our nets, but in where we cast our eyes. Imagine for a moment, you are standing on the shore. The air smells of salt and seaweed, a warm breeze flits across your skin as you drag your net along the water’s edge. Jesus approaches you and says, in a quiet yet compelling voice, “Come along with me.”

Where do you direct your gaze when Jesus speaks to you? Are your eyes cast downward, unable to look directly at His face? Do you feel too ashamed or too unworthy to look him in the eye? I believe this feeling of unworthiness can be the single biggest impediment to living a life with meaning. And it’s absolutely without foundation. God loves us and accepts us exactly the way we are. The fourth Psalm says, “O God, you have declared me perfect in your eyes.” Does this mean we’re perfect? Of course not. Only God is perfect. So what does this line from Scripture mean? Years ago I attended an evening retreat where the presenter said the following: “God has a plan and a purpose for you, and He made you exactly the way He needs to you to be.” You can disagree with that statement, feeling you have far too many flaws for God to ever want to use you for much of anything – but you’d be wrong.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” (And if you saw my garden last summer, you would know how wholeheartedly I embraced Mr. Emerson’s theory about weeds!) You may think of yourself as a useless weed, unworthy when you compare yourself to the beautiful flowers around you… but God knows who you truly are, and what you can accomplish, if you would simply drop your net and follow Him.

Psalm 139 says: “O Lord… you made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous – and how well I know it.” If God made each and every one of us so wonderfully unique and flawed and complex, why wouldn’t he want to use us for an important purpose? I believe if you stood on that seashore and told Jesus you couldn’t follow Him because you weren’t good enough, He would laugh gently and say, “Silly child, my Father made you this way for a purpose. Come… let’s see what you can do.”

Called to Holiness

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old phone
When you think of a “holy” person, what image comes to mind? Perhaps you think of a priest, deacon, nun, or other clergy. Or that person in your parish who attends daily Mass. Or the volunteer who devotes his or her time to soup kitchens, food pantries, and other charitable organizations.

When you imagine a holy person…do you ever picture yourself?

To be holy is to be like God. Doesn’t that seem kind of lofty? How on earth could ordinary ol’ me achieve such a thing? The answer lies right in the question. Holiness doesn’t come from the “earthly” world. It’s not something we earn, or work towards, or deserve. It’s a gift from God. As St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4)

God chose us. How beautiful! Continue reading →

Mary’s Yes

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tanner_annunciation-sm

“The Annunciation” H. Tanner 1898

True confession time. For most of my life I did not pray to Mary. I wasn’t in the habit of saying the Rosary. And I did not have any statues of the Blessed Mother in my home or garden. Mary had always seemed a lofty ideal to me.   A heavenly image of perfection that I could not live up to or relate to.  I once heard a priest say that our Church hadn’t done Mary any favors by putting her up on a pedestal. The higher she was raised up, the more remote she became.

Years ago, a friend recommended that I read a book called Two From Galilee by Marjorie Holmes, a dramatic account of Mary’s story—a teenage girl chosen by God to bring Christ into our earthly world. The Mary depicted in this story was one I found infinitely compelling: young, scared, and facing an overwhelming responsibility. Discovering Mary through the prayer of imagination was the moment she became real to me.  And now I pray to her all the time.

Who was Mary? What was her life like? What was the historical context in which she lived? Only by learning Mary’s personal story can we find our own story. And the Advent season is where Mary’s story begins. Continue reading →

A Time to Speak

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shy

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak
Ecclesiastes 3:1,7

As a young girl I was shy and deeply introverted. This resulted in a rock wall of silence that took me years to chip away. In my high school classrooms I never spoke. I answered every question in my head. I came up with witty responses to the silly banter of adolescence, but never actually delivered them. My teachers begged me to participate, but the words just wouldn’t come out. Looking back at my high school yearbook, almost every note from teachers and acquaintances remarked on how quiet I was. Only to my friends did I open up and reveal my inner life. I felt safe with them. I could trust them with my truth.

This reticence lessened in college and more so in graduate school, but only by a little. My graduate advisor understood. She knew I wasn’t just sitting there, disengaged with all that was happening in class. In fact I was quite busy. I was learning, discovering, uncovering, soaking in, turning over, deciding, proving, agreeing, dissenting. All this was happening within the safe walls of my own mind. I knew that more was expected of me, but the words just wouldn’t come out. Almost like a crowd of people trying to get out of an elevator all at once. They were wedged in. Stuck.  If you’re an introvert like me, this feeling is probably all too familiar. Continue reading →

The Cracked Pot

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As a follow up to my last post, Broken and Beautiful, I offer you this simple and lovely parable about a flawed pot.  Take some time today to think about how your flaws might be working toward a special purpose.

Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, 2009

Photo by Giovanni Dall’Orto, 2009

A Water Bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole, which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years, this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one-and-a-half pots of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes my water to leak out all the way back to your house.” The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, we would not have such beauty.”

~Source unknown

PRAYER

Divine Creator, you are the Water Bearer, cleansing us with mercy and forgiveness. Your water refreshes us like newly fallen rain.

Heavenly God, your amazing love has the power to set us free and make us whole. May we always turn to You for forgiveness and healing.

God of Love, bless our “cracked-pot” days, when we cannot see past our brokenness and flaws. May each crack become a place where your grace may enter.