What am I even doing?
In my last post I talked a bit about the feeling of loneliness when my wife went away for one day, and that started a bit of a discussion about my love language. The language that I speak in is works of service. I’m a doer. And I think I’ve always been that way. If I’m not “doing” at home, I’m “doing” at church. That was definitely true when I was working for churches. And that thought got me thinking on what my purpose is.
For me, for so long, my purpose was to be a husband, a dad, a youthworker. I would do. Even to my own detriment. When I look back to 2017, aka the year of doom, it becomes even more stark. My wife at the time was struggling with her health, and we had two small children. I would get up, sort the kids out, take the eldest to school, go to work, go home at lunch, take my daughter to pre-school, go back to work, pick the kids up from school, make dinner, and probably more often than not, do some more work. At this point, without realising it, or probably ignoring it, my marriage was falling apart, I wasn’t doing a very good job as a youthworker, and I was on burn out.
Towards the end of 2017 I was told that I would need to leave my job, they gave me 6 months to find a new one, and my wife at the time left with my kids. And then, when in Jan 2018 my work came to end, and I was told that the church elders thought it best if I stepped back from even volunteering at the youth groups, I felt as if the rug had been pulled from underneath me. I had lost all my purpose. I was no longer a husband, was no longer a dad, was no longer a youth worker. What was I? Who was I? What was my purpose?
I think I resonated with the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible when he writes “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.” They were some pretty dark days.
But enter in a couple of my guy friends. One guy took me climbing each week, helped me move in to my new house, and basically watched out for me. And another, a pastor of a local church, had me round every couple of weeks and chatted and prayed with me. And he helped me to realise something which I still cling to today. The thing I am first, before a youthworker, husband or father is actually a child. My purpose isn’t to serve others to gain my identity, but I am loved, sought and bought (I think that was a talk back at Sorted, a youth event in London, can’t remember who said it, but it has stuck with me ever since). And it is those things that make me who I am and give me purpose. I am a child of God, and loved by him so much that he sought me out and bought me at a price – his Son. The whole situation made me realise that I had a wider purpose. The things I was doing – trying to be a dad, husband and church worker, were not bad things at all, but they were taking over, they were making me burn out, and even more so when it felt like I had failed in all of them.
In my work, I’ve been asking some of the young people that I work with if there is purpose in life, and if so what is it. Some of the answers I’ve had have been interesting. “to love”, “be kind”, “to live”, “to have fun and succeed in whatever you try to do.”
So what is my purpose? Well I am loved sought and bought, and to carry on with what the writer of Ecclesiastes says at the end of the book:
Now all has been heard;
Ecclesiastes 12:13
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
Fear God, listen to him, follow him. Or as some clever old blokes once said “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
What we feel our purpose is, as a man generally, but as a dad, may well change as our children grow up, or when there is forced separation. Some days we may feel like we hit that purpose and sometimes we may feel like we fall way short of it. But let’s try and keep our eyes focused on a wider purpose. That we are loved, (and that may be hard for us to remember) that we have been sought out and bought at a great price. I can’t get my head around that sometimes, but I need to keep coming back to it. And in doing that I can enjoy God. I can enjoy the good things that he has given me to both have and do.
Our purpose is both complex and simple, ever changing, but also constant. It is what we anchor our lives on. A thought I heard on the Bible Project podcast from Dr Tim Mackie. he said something along the lines of “What we tell ourselves each morning is what will shape us.” What we tell ourselves will be what we think our purpose is, it is what will shape us – our desires shape us.
What do you think? Drop me a message and let me know.
image credit: Magda Ehlers from Pexels.com
