My buddy Ben, mustache man and runner extraordinaire, gave me a copy of Kevin Hall’s book Aspire for Christmas.  The book has been a good read so far.  I didn’t know anything about Kevin Hall or the book before he sent it to me,  but the title caption was inviting enough: “Discovering your purpose through the power of words.”

I appreciate words, and, as Ben has surmised, I struggle with questions related to purpose. Hall builds chapters around eleven words or phrases that he believes one should wrestle with, or at least think about, when seeking to find your purpose in life and then chasing it.  About a third of the way in, I’ve enjoyed the book so far.

Hall discusses the etymology of these key words in each chapter, and then talks about how they each relate to helping one build an intentional life. I especially enjoyed his exploration in chapter 4 of the word “passion”. Hall highlights the fact that the word “passion” is related to the word “path”, and where we usually think of a path as a route to get from point a to point b, the cognate for both “passion” and “path”-related terms really means “to suffer”.  His suggestion that whatever we find in life that we are really willing to suffer and to sacrifice for is where we should invest ourselves is pretty insightful.  This isn’t a new thought, but it is a new consideration to me.

I don’t know why, but I have struggled for much of my life to really nail down what it is I am all about.  When I was in high school, and even in college, I thought I had a strong sense of what my calling was.  Growing up in church, I was exposed to the idea that God does guide people to pursue different purposes, and if you were led to work in the church, you had a calling.  I left high school with a strong calling to work in ministry.  At that time, the seemingly obvious path before me was to attend college, attend seminary, and then take a pastoral position in a church.  I have always had a strong belief in the reality and goodness of God, in my need to be perpetually connected to Him, in the need for redemption in every life in some way because of an acceptance of the Judeo-Christian concept of sin, and that God is personal, relational, and that people were made to know Him and find their life in Him. I still hold those spiritual beliefs today, although I may have intellectualized them over the years, and archived them as tenable truths in my mind, while letting life and all of its frictions diminish those beliefs in my heart.

We may fill our minds with mountains of data during our lives, but we make decisions and live a life out of what we have in our hearts. And if the knowledge we have accrued doesn’t help our hearts to make decisions and to instruct our actions, it doesn’t do us much good.

I attended college with an eye on becoming a pastor, and then went on to seminary, according to the plan.  Following seminary, I didn’t feel ready yet to pastor.  I went on and did some additional training at a hospital, exploring the work of a chaplain, wondering if I fit in better in that milieu.  I finished that training, and again, considering ministry and taking a position in a church somewhere, or in a hospital, I continued to feel unprepared- inadequate- to serve in a church.  And then I got lost.

For a while, depression dragged me around.  At an age when I should have been clarifying my identity, I instead felt like I was losing it.  My twenties slid into my thirties, and I continued to wander occupationally.  And with the unsettled career path, I wandered relationally as well.  And I wondered, God what am I here for?

A few bad decisions, a stillborn marriage, and ensuing divorce later, I realized that whatever deep calling I had felt as a teen to serve in ministry was thrashed, torn to shreds by the brokenness in my life.  Biblically, I realized I was outside of the pool of “acceptable candidates” for pastoral ministry- a perspective heavily endorsed by my denomination- because of my divorced status.  In a descent into darkness following the failed marriage, the question of my purpose became a mockery to me since a church career seemed all but an impossibility to me.  And the lostness remained.

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to figure out who I should be and what I should be about by trying to get other people to tell me.  You do that when you haven’t learned to trust yourself.  You do that when you don’t stop seeking the approval of others and learn to listen to your heart.

I am at an odd place in my life at this time: I am too old to be ‘young’, and I am too young to be ‘old’.

When you are young, you dream about the future and make plans and think about what you want to chase and what you want to climb and what you want to do.  When you become old, you start looking over your shoulder at your life, and you assess and look for signs of what you have done, wondering if any of those things you expected of yourself or what you would do came together very well, and you also think more about closing the shop at then end of the day- what things need to be put away in the right places, what messes need to be cleaned up before you turn out the lights and close the locked door.  I have always remember this quote I heard somewhere when I was a younger person: “A young man becomes an old man when his dreams become regrets.”

Fortunately, I realize I am not too old to still discover a purpose in my life.  I don’t think that years of wandering in the desert have been just empty years.  We all still have time to find a purpose- the purpose- for why we are here, at whatever age we are at.

In my case, I know that the purpose question will remain unanswered until I strive to really listen more to my heart, and to trust it. Love Himself said that He lives in it, and because of that I should be able to trust it.  I think for many of us, though, it’s a challenge for us to hear our hearts.  To hear our hearts, and to follow them when they try to lead us down our path is a courageous choice.  Finding one’s purpose, just like pursuing one’s passion, requires courage.

Thanks for the book, Ben.  It, and life, have me thinking.  Now is as good a time in life as any to wrangle with that purpose question.