So all of this—this functionalish life spent living with pain and limits and loss yet learning how to live there with hope and faith—all of this messiness ultimately begs the question:

What is the purpose of all of this?

Indeed, it begs, for me, a multitude of questions that set me out on this journey in the first place, attempting to wrestle my way to answers that could quiet my angst-ridden spirit:

Can a limited, pain-filled, “non-productive” life still be a life of purpose?

What do you do when you can’t do anything at all?

How are calling and accomplishment different?

Are what I DO and who I AM one in the same, or were they never meant to be linked so closely?

Am I of any worth to the Lord if all I can do most of the time lately is sit on the couch and try to breathe out of both nostrils at the same time?

I’m sure NONE of you can relate.

These last few weeks have been a perfect example of the struggles I have with chronic illness. I want to write.  And then I want to write some other stuff.  And then, when I’m finished, I want to write some more.  But I’ve been sick on and off for four weeks now and my brain isn’t functional. It’s not even functionalish.  So writing has been, well, difficult at best and most often just plain non-existent.  So I find myself living in this place where my goals and dreams and ambitions are unlimited yet my body is very, very, VERY NOT unlimited.

So what does this mean for me?  If I can’t full-out pursue what I believe I was made to do, if I can’t chase after a vision of ministry I believe was from the Lord, if all of these are further taken from me and not a single one of them is acheived, then what is my purpose in this life?  If I never accomplish what I desire to accomplish, have I sold myself short?  Have I let God down?  Have I failed?

Some days I know better.  Some days, I think, NO.  There is more to life than achievement.  More to this walk of faith than mere production.  I think of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, having somehow chosen the better thing, I hear the call to lie down in green pastures, I read the invitation to walk in unforced rhythms of grace.  And I stop for a moment.  And I breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Then some days, I think, Ummmmmm, but WAIT…

What about Well done good and faithful servant?  What about Created to do good works which were prepared in advance?  What about Faith without works is dead?  What about Fight the good fight and Run as if to win the race?

And then I’m right back at it again.

I spoke a few weeks back about wanting to fill my box.  About the intersection of accepting I indeed have limits but seeking to live fully and abundantly within them.  More and more, I think this is the question I need to be asking:  Lord, what are the dimensions of my box?  And what does it mean to fill it?

I read an article recently about Victor Frankl, psychiatrist and author of Man’s Search for Meaning.  As a counselor, the book was, of course, required reading—though I confess I’ve always been drawn to literature from the Holocaust and had actually read it long before grad school.  Frankl, though a prisoner, worked as a therapist in the camps, and his famous conclusion, when considering the difference between those who had lived and those who had died, was that those who endured the oppression of the camps did so because they found a sense of meaning in their life or in their suffering.  They felt their lives had a sense of purpose.

The article quotes the CDC, who estimate that “4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose.”  I never would have said that was true of me, prior to getting sick.  I loved my counseling job.  I was writing a manuscript.  I was blogging several days a week.  I was raising two incredible kids.  I believed my life had purpose—I could SEE my life had purpose.  The fruit was there in front of me.

Nowadays, the fruit isn’t as evident.  And not always of the variety I would prefer.  The purpose thing feels a little less clear.  And by “a little,” I mean A LOT.

The Frankl articles points out that psychologists believe there is a difference between living a “happy” life and a “meaningful” or “purpose-full” live.  According to many, the happy life is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”  This shouldn’t strike us as unusual, yet it somehow does.

The authors write,

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health… they are able to buy the things that they need and want… and experience a lack of stress or worry.

Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. “If there is meaning in life at all,” Frankl wrote, “then there must be meaning in suffering.”

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.

Purpose.  Even when feeling bad.

Does that sound familiar?

How big is my box?

Big enough to fit all of you in it with me.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.  If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.  And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.  2 Corinthians 1:3-7

I don’t yet know the answers to all of these questions about calling and accomplishment and purpose and meaning.  These are perhaps the hardest for me to iron out as I move forward into this vulnerable adventure—the creases deep into the fabric, unwilling to be smoothed.  But what I do know is this:

There are many of you who can relate to what I’m experiencing.  To what my daughter is experiencing.  You’ve told us so.  And we hear you.  That, for now, is enough.

There is comfort—and PURPOSE—to be found in traveling this road together.  I’m thankful you’re here—thankful there is someone up ahead, reaching out their hand for me and my daughter as we reach our own hands out to you.  Making our way, hand in hand.

Frankl writes that, He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.  Whether there are five of your or five hundred of you, you are a part of our WHY. 

I hope we’re now a part of yours, as well.

accomplishment acheivement purpose success writing