A 30 Year Anniversary (and why I do not worry about my purpose!)

I love this girl. Here she is, on her college graduation day, wearing a vintage Jackie-O style dress that she found in a thrift store in Chicago. She paired it with long white vintage gloves, the better to hide that small bottle of bubble stuff that she planned on blowing during the ceremony. Bright red lipstick...very French.

Her whole future lays before her, and she is terrified.

This girl is me...thirty years ago this month.

Shortly after these photos were taken, this girl became a wife. And shortly after that, this girl became a mother.

I wish I could hold this girl's carefully gloved hand and tell her that everything will be fine.

I remember spending a lot of my early adult years worrying. I had this college education, but what was I doing with it? I was feeding babies and cleaning socks and cooking, terribly, and worrying. The world told me I was supposed to be doing something important, being someone important, making a difference. Never enough.

What the world wasn't telling me was that I WAS doing something important. I was doing exactly what God created me to do.

All those years of wasted worry, of not living in the moment and resting in God's promises for me.

I hear this same worry repeated by young women again and again. Young moms whose important work is not valued in our society. Young women who no longer seek out marriage and motherhood because that does not look good on a resume. Basically, girls who have been lied to time and again.

Because what the world promises is empty. But what God promises is full of life and hope.

I found this beautiful verse in Psalm 138 recently.

"The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands." Ps. 138:8

There has been a LOT of talk in the past decade (and more) about finding your purpose, living a life of purpose. You would be hard-pressed to find a church that wasn't exploring this topic in great detail. Books, seminars, workshops, you name it. Best life now.

Great. We know plenty about what men and women have to say about it. But what does God's word say about it?

This:

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.

Wow.

So I don't need to read a best selling book to discover my purpose? Nope. I don't need to attend a workshop and a forty day fast? Nope. I don't need to take a thirty minute survey to figure out my gifts? No.

Because God's word promises that HE will fulfill his purpose for me. It's not my job to worry about it.

There is so much cluttering our christian culture these days, and most of it boils down to me doing more and being more. All of it eventually leads to worry. Worry that I am not living out my "purpose". Worry that I have too much stuff in my closets. Worry that I am not hearing God's voice audibly telling me what job to take and what house to buy. Worry that I'm not praying right. Worry that I need to work harder on this "relationship", to be more so that God will love me.

Worry, worry, worry.

The very thing that Jesus cautions us against again and again in the gospels.

What is my purpose? God's word tells me that it is to love God and love my neighbor. How? Well, that's where God gives me the freedom to live this out in daily life.

Today, I will bring my neighbors some vegetables from the garden. I will drive Sam to cross country practice, wash his sheets, and take him shopping for school supplies. Tonight, I will cook dinner for Ed after he flies home from  Kansas City.

All of this brings me back to that girl at the top of this post. She never would have guessed that thirty years down the road, she'd be using a lot of those things she learned in higher education to pursue a midlife career in writing. She never would have guessed how her writing may help people one day. And maybe today, she has written words that someone really needed to hear.

I don't know what tomorrow holds. But today, I will hold on to God's promises and I will not worry.

Martin Luther once said "I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my guide."

I plan on spending some time in His word today, looking for the promises.

Blessings, cafe friends!