Our flawed tendencies as humans, this fallen world that we inhabit – these are the things that cause our blindness.
A recent change of pace, of scenery, of lifestyle, of season, has left me reevaluating just what it means to seek purpose, and just what the meaning of purpose itself is. Living a sheltered life, always guarded from uncertainty and lack of clarity, I made my way well enough up to this point.
Spending the first eighteen years under the wings of my parents and school, I’ve never really had to worry. Struggle has never been a major issue (at least anything beyond wearing the wrong brand of jeans to school or forgetting to finish my homework). In high school, I was accepted by my peers and was doing a pretty good job at living out my “purpose” during that season. Don’t get me wrong, high school and the teenage years are pivotal in any young person’s life, including my own. However, the “real world” has a certain way with creating a whirlwind out of your life that teenage life just does not.
As I caught my first glimpse of this “real world” that I’ve heard adults speak of my whole life, my perspective slowly began to change. It was a process, but it began to occur, nonetheless. After graduation, I did exactly what society tells any sensible young person to do – I started college.
I can vividly remember my parents, my teachers, my directors, all reminding me of my impending success throughout my childhood. “You’re the one, Alyssa. You’ll go farther than we ever have. You can be a doctor, you can be a writer, you can be a musician, you can be anything you want. Keep up your hard work, make the right choices, and you’ll go places, kid. The world won’t be so hard for you.” And so going into college, the choices I needed to begin making became real. It was frightening, but it was okay. I had a formula, after all. I was already told how to live, how to make my way in the “real world”, if only I follow the perfect series of steps for the next four years of my life.
Fast-forward two years – to this season, this day, this moment. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Ohio, 1200 miles away from my home, my family, the high school I graduated from, and the place I thought I’d ultimately settle down. I’m not in school, I don’t have a job, I’m newly married at only 19 years old, and I’m in the process of coming to terms with this new life I’ve begun on the other side of the country from where I was only a short month ago. When I consider all of these things, I come to one conclusion – life is nothing at all what it seems.
If I were to bear my heart, and be honest about how I really feel, I would tell you that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t follow the formula, I didn’t pursue what the world told me to – I’m so far off course; I’m an outlaw of our first-world culture.
Because I’m such an outlaw, it’s been easy to let myself believe the lie that I’m falling behind, that success will be something always just beyond my reach. I mean, I didn’t follow the steps, for crying out loud! “Will I ever be good enough to make something of myself, to follow my dreams and passions?” is a thought that has often been on my mind, lately.
And then there was this afternoon. Nothing significant happened, I didn’t have a huge realization, I didn’t stumble across the answer to life’s unanswered questions; I just listened. I took a breath, I looked around, I stopped for just a moment to simply be. Madeleine L’engle expressed it perfectly in her book Walking On Water:
I sit on my favourite rock, looking over the brook, to take time away from busy-ness, to be. I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it…It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.
Her words came at just the right time; they resonated deep with my current wounds and confusions. “Safety is only an illusion”, she writes. This small, but powerful statement could not be truer. Though the world does not have a malicious intent in providing this “safety” in telling us how to live our lives, how to achieve “success”, that perspective could not be more flawed – we are blinded by what is untrue.
We spend so much time trying to figure out how to be safe, what the “perfect” life looks like, how to make our shallow dreams a reality, how to “become anything we set our minds to.” And yet, despite our greatest efforts, we turn up empty handed and unsatisfied. Indeed, “safety is only an illusion”.
Life is nothing at all what it seems. It is uncertain, unstable, unpredictable. I have been exhausting myself in pursuit of this “safety” that doesn’t even exist. And so it dawned on me this afternoon, as I stood overlooking the beautiful, snow-filled Ohio landscape, the only thing certain and constant in this life is the Creator of life Himself.
One can spend their whole life working and struggling to find purpose, fulfillment, success. But there is only one way to stumble upon these things – and that is by yielding to God and His Spirit.
The world’s success is fleeting. But when we see things through the eyes of the One who put it all in motion, we can pursue something and Someone who will endure for all eternity.
I know it won’t be easy. In fact, it will be hard, even unbearable at times. Straining to see something unnatural to our instincts is difficult and painful. But I know that God cares for His children, and that He will be beside us every step of the way. The reward is glorious, and beyond anything we could ever imagine. As I seek the real adventure that He has for me, it is my prayer that you will be inspired to do the same.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. // Ephesians 3:20
