Wrestling With Purpose

It sneaks in through my insecurity; it gnaws at my soul like an unreachable itch; it haunts like an endless aching hunger. I wrestle with it, then reach some sort of truce, even experience nice stretches of contentment; then it whispers in again, often late at night, and won't go away until I give it what it begs for - but I still don't have the definitive answer, so the best I can do is placate it with words and blind reassurance.

Purpose.

I've asked the question in other forums and of many people. How do you know what your purpose in life is? Is it a once-and-for-all purpose? Or does it evolve as we evolve? Do we spend our lives learning lessons and developing skills in order to eventually fulfill our purpose? Or are those  experiences and encounters in themselves our purpose already unfolding?

I think that in my early adult years I may have confused my vocation with my purpose. I was convinced that my calling in life was to have children, dozens of children, some of my own and the rest adopted. For so many years, from as early as 5 years of age, all I wanted was to adopt children that nobody else wanted. And so I lived as if that was what was going to happen - and waited and waited for it to unfold. I took college courses in childcare to prepare myself. I searched for the life partner who would have the same vision and calling. As time went by and neither the husband or opportunity - or financial and physical ability - showed up to help make the dream happen, I was forced by circumstances to busy myself with other endeavors and other career choices. After a massive burnout, several severe bouts of profound depression, chronic debilitating fatigue and a body that would never physically be able to carry children, the dream became impossible. Not only would I never be able to have children of my own, I would also never be approved for adoption because of my history of depression.

Because of the severe fatigue, the loss of that dream didn't hit so hard...I was too tired to look after children anyway, so it was actually a relief to be able to let go of that particular calling. Imagine, trying to cope with a dozen children when I could barely get myself out of bed. Clearly that dream was not within my reach.

Through years of hard work, therapy and perseverance in focusing on gratitude and positive attitude (I call it "rewiring the attic"), I did rise from the ashes and rubble of those days of profound depression and severe debilitation.  I'm proud of my progress, and delighted to be in a good, stable, positive place with more reliable energy and motivation than I've felt since the early 1980's. I've come a very very long way.

But the one thing that didn't make it to my here-and-now is a new-and-improved sense of purpose. It's still a very fuzzy haze of confusion and unknowing...many of the answers that have emerged out of the many wrestlings do sort of click, but not enough to make the lasting impact that I'm searching for. When I was at my worst, so debilitated by fatigue as to be bedridden for long stretches of time, I remember sobbing and asking God what on earth I could possibly be good for anymore. The answer was clear and simple - you can always pray. It immediately brought peace, and for many years, that was the answer I fell back on whenever the question would haunt me again. And God seemed to be very serious about it, to the point of waking me up at night with vivid images of people and global situations to pray for (many of which don't even ever show up in the newspapers or TV newscasts, so would never have come to my mind by themselves because I couldn't even conceive of such misery and need when all of this first began). I am not able to fall back to sleep again until I pray for these people and situations. This continues even today, not only at night, but constantly...constant beckonings and callings to pray for a never-ending stream of names, people and circumstances. There's no doubt in my mind and heart that this is indeed something I'm meant to do. And I love to do it, I love to pray...even when I'm in the middle of a mall, or restaurant, or the hustle and bustle of a crowded city street, I can feel my spirit constantly praying for healing and blessings on the people I encounter and pass along the way.

But for some reason, there's still something inside of me that can't accept that it's enough...at the end of each day, as I thank God for the blessings and wonders of that day, I also find myself asking, yet again, that my eyes and heart be opened to see and fulfill my purpose, my reason for being here. The answers are always the same: pray, love (learn how to love and to be loved) and be light. One of my very favourite scripture verses is from Micah 6:8, and I hug it close to my heart as one of the most beloved answers to my quest for what I'm here to do:  

What does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy  
and to walk humbly with your God.

 I can do that. I'm learning more and more about love and mercy every moment. And humility? I can only laugh, because one of the most constant situations I encounter - everywhere I go - is the empty toilet paper roller - I'm serious!! It happens so much that I've actually asked God, half-joking, half-whining, if that was my purpose in life, to change the toilet paper rolls everywhere I go...I think He may have actually answered me by asking "well, what if that WAS all I ever asked you to do?" To which I answered, "well, if I knew it was You asking it of me, I would do it with joy." And I swear I saw His eyes sparkle...and so I change the toilet paper roll everywhere I go, with joy and gratitude, and a little knowing glance and chuckle at that twinkle in His eye.

At this point in time, I honestly don't know if it's enough, if these "very little things" can really be my purpose in life. There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer that will silence that questioning or feed that yearning...but maybe we're not meant to know all the facets or nooks and crannies of our purpose. Maybe for some of us, it really does evolve as the day evolves. Some people do seem to have a better grasp of what they're meant to do, I would like to experience that sense of accomplishment and contentment, but will probably have to continue wrestling with whatever it is within me that is blocking that sense of "being enough".

For now I'll continue to pray, love, and be light wherever possible. And change the toilet paper rolls everywhere I go.

Blogging The Journey

I started writing this blog because there is a lot of crap going on inside of me, because there was a lot of crap going on in my life for the past few years. The crap has finally settled down...but there is, and will continue to be, fallout to deal with. So my hope is that by pouring some of it out here, it might help me find better ways to get through.

I want my life to make a positive difference. I want my words to bring light and hope and maybe even comfort to anyone who reads them...including my own self, because I too need light and hope for my own journey. It's fun searching through the Internet for positive messages, inspirational quotes and beautiful pictures to share with others, here and on Facebook, but I do it also because of my own need to soak in that beauty and inspiration and positivity. I post these words because I really need them to sink into my own psyche and keep me moving forward and upward. I don't want to get sucked into the darkness that hovers at the edge of my day, waiting to grab me by even the thinnest shred of futility and pull me down into a dark hole too deep to climb my own way out of.

So I write all around it, infusing hope and light, because I know that there has to be hope and light. Even though I might not be feeling positive deep down inside, I hope that by writing it into my script, it will come true.

Because underneath all of these attempts to rewrite myself into a better place is a strong undercurrent of remnant sadness. I still feel bruised by the impact of so much fallout, and lost in the rubble of so many rugs being pulled out from under me recently. I simply don't know how to cope with it all sometimes, it's so overwhelming. So I don't do anything at all, except resolutely plodding on, day after day, breaking each day into manageable chunks of routines and moments, ignoring the ambiguity between where I am and where I want to be. Because if I confront it, it means I'd have to do something about it and I can't...or don't want to have to make any life-altering decisions right now. I need some of these rugs to stay under my feet for now.

I guess that's my coping mechanisms...to just take each day as it comes and deal with it in those smaller  chunks. I wake up in the morning determined to fling open those curtains and breathe in enough of that sunlight and "clean slate" mercy to carry me through the day with enough positivity and gratitude attitude to make it all the way through to that moment when I can fall back into bed again and be grateful to have made it through another day.

My experience has been that when we dwell too long on the negative, we often just end up perpetuating it and never find our way out of it. As valuable as therapy has been throughout my life, there has always come that point when it was time to stop digging around in the dirt and start building something better with whatever is left to build on. So here, I'm trying to use the negative stuff only to provide background and a starting point, and from there I want to explore the hope and light and all the small "do-able" ways to find the way through, in hopes that it not only helps me but maybe someone else who is also struggling.

Most of us are hurting in some way; many of us find ourselves fumbling our way to new horizons that we're forced to redefine because of loss and fallout and rugs being pulled out from underneath us. We need hope that we can find safe pathways through the tough stretches of road, and light to help us find our footing in the strange new surroundings that we face when new upheavals leave us lost without an updated roadmap.

I don't know if my struggles help anyone else. I do know I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other in blind faith that one day the light and hope that I try to infuse into my writings become my own and not just borrowed from catchy quotes and beautiful Googled pictures.

Now Is Right On Time

Somebody posted this on my Facebook wall last night and it sent me to bed with gratitude in my heart because for several days now, I've been in a bit of a funk. It was triggered by hearing about a family reunion that took place recently - and to which I was not invited. And yet I heard about it only because people contacted me to say that they were sorry I hadn't been able to make it - apparently they all thought that it had been too far for us to drive. But after searching through my email and phone messages, we're sure that we received nothing about being welcome to join the gathering. It would not have bothered me so much to hear that everyone had gotten together...it only bothered me to hear that they THOUGHT I had been invited and just didn't show up. When in fact, I've been so hungry for family lately that nothing would have kept me away had I known I would be welcome.

So then I've been haunted and plagued by the relentless "why" running helter-skelter through my mind ever since. And that caused another avalanche of regrets and despair, and those old familiar feelings of inferiority and worthlessness because in my mind, the lack of invitation affirmed the fear that my life has been such a disaster and taken such questionable twists and turns as to render me unacceptable in the eyes and hearts of this part of my family. "Beyond Redemption" so to speak.

In my saner, wiser moments, I'm convinced beyond doubt that there is no such thing as being "beyond redemption". I've experienced the mercy and grace of God to such profound and tangible extents, that it is impossible for me to believe that any one of us could ever be beyond His love. And yet, there I was, lost and wallowing in those old fears that I could be wrong and that maybe....

But I resolutely fought back against that tide of despair, clinging to my faith and to the lessons I've learned about God's Love. I wrestled with these old regrets and ancient tapes in my head, and prayed for help in my endeavor to refocus on the positive and good - on GOD'S loving vision for my life - I mean, we can't go back and rewrite history, can we...and having experienced His mercy and tender compassion, it's impossible to conceive that we would be forever banned from His Presence because of stupid choices we've made in the past. The only sane way to keep oneself going is to believe that there is good that can come out of anything and everything...that we can grow and evolve and perhaps even become wounded healers, able to help others who are also lost and wounded along their way.

So I prayed, and wept, and prayed some more, and read inspirational writings, and prayed, nagging Him with my angst and moanings, crawling into His Love for solace, and then slowly began to regain my footing to the point where I could let go of all of that garbage. And then a friend, who knew nothing of all of this, posted this quote on my wall. For me it was the perfect answer to my prayers...a tender, loving response from a tender, loving God who knows the crushing disappointment I feel about myself all too often, who knows the agonizing sadness of those regrets and my ongoing attempts to fumble my way to "better" and "wiser".

My journey has molded me for my greater good. It was exactly what it needed to be. I can believe that none of it was lost (or wasted) time - because it has taken EACH and EVERY situation - every twist and turn has had its lessons and wisdoms that He needed me to learn - to bring me to my - not just "my", but HIS "now" for me - and this "now", here today, is RIGHT ON TIME! Hallelujah!!

Maybe my invitation was lost in the mail. Maybe they were just meant to be together the way they gathered, for reasons more profound than any of us know. Now it's okay. I'm okay. I trust again. There will be other gatherings, and the time will be right for me to be there. God answered. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And it is very very good.

12 O'Clock Authenticity and Chameleonic Fumblings

Several years ago, I had an ongoing discussion with someone about "12 O'Clock Authenticity". The discussion arose out of my fumbling my way through a loss of identity after my Dad and Mom died. Mom's death was especially catalytic, because so many buried, squelched, repressed emotions came raging to the surface with such force that I simply could not cope with the onslaught. It took several months of therapy to help me through that minefield...that was at the same time that I had collapsed from exhaustion and grief, and had spiraled into fairly deep depression. We had to do a lot of "rewiring of the attic" to find new stable ground and horizons that I could want to live for. 

As well as re-establishing new ground and horizons, we also had to work on identity. After a lifetime of changing, or "chameleonizing" myself in order to survive, we realized that I really didn't even have any sense at all of who I was anymore. I didn't know what I liked, what I wanted, what my hopes and dreams were...nothing about my old self made any sense to me anymore. Everything had been inextricably linked and dependent on my family, my job, my religion, my friends...with the loss of my job, the deaths of both parents, the inability to go to church at that time, and the loss of the many friends who had been work-related and who quickly moved on to other work-related friendships, I had nothing left to mark my niche in the world.

It was a long fumbling crawl out of the rubble of "what was and never could be again". But I made it - and felt good about having survived. But that nagging feeling of lostness continued. And so we had to really dig deep inside and start pulling out facets of my deepest self in order to find out who I was in that new here-and-now. We discovered that one of my greatest talents was being an amazingly successful chameleon, so good that we no longer even knew who the original Sharon was.

This person with whom I had the discussion helped me to envision it this way...that we all start out at twelve o'clock, brand new, with a clean slate on which we're meant to write who we are, day by day, experience by experience, discovering what our natural talents are, and evolving all that we experience and discover into the best possible self we can be in order to live the kind of life we wish to create for ourselves. Lives built on passion, talent and the meanings we attach to our activities and events around us. But we are shaped from our earliest years by the responses to our explorations and discoveries, and if those responses (especially from parents, siblings and teachers) are negative and punitive, we begin to change (chameleonize) ourselves to better fit in and meet their approval.

In some childhood environments, this disapproval is constant...eventually so constantly inconsistent as to be baffling and detrimental. But we continuously keep trying to "fix" ourselves in a desperate attempt to be acceptable....and every time we alter ourselves, even just a little change at a time, we move farther away from 12 o'clock. Eventually we chameleonize ourselves so far beyond our original starting point that we lose all sight of where we started from - and who we were. We bury, repress and deny our own likes, dislikes, opinions, beliefs and perhaps even our natural talents and passions.

So our continuing discussion came full circle, with the theory that in order to get back to our original truest self, we had to return to 12 o'clock authenticity...but then it started to get complex as we wondered if that was even possible, because after a life-time of chameleonizing ourselves, how could we ever trust that we actually reached 12 o'clock authenticity or just chameleonized ourselves yet again into BELIEVING that we had finally reached that pinnacle.

Sigh. We never did resolve it. And I had to do more of that wrestling and fumbing and rebuilding new horizons after Gary died and the rest of our family shattered. I still fumble. In large part because deep inside, I still feel like my future and horizons - the future and horizons of our entire family - were stolen when Gary died and I don't know what to replace those horizons with.

But after all of that hard work, I do have a much clearer picture of what I like and dislike, and am no longer willing to auto-suppress or hide my emotions and pretend I don't feel what I feel just for the sake of someone else's comfort.

But lifelong habits die hard. I know I still chameleonize myself in order to keep the peace in the house. I don't know how I feel about that...it changes from one situation to another. I seem to like being able to do so if my heart can honestly be contented with "just being kind". And being able to pick and choose my battles feels like a new level of empowerment, and that feels good. So maybe it's okay to pick and choose when to chameleonize myself, as long as I always know and stay true to the root truths about who I am and want to be, even if that includes being kind and chameleonic when I decide it's okay to be.

We're still a work-in-progress...to be continued...