I was talking with a friend a while ago, and she mentioned that it is easy for her to get up early if she’s fueled by purpose.  That fits in so well to what I want to share with you, but I’ll rephrase it just a bit:  It is easy to go through life with intention if we are centered in our purpose.

Today, I want to explore with you the idea of being centered in purpose.

Being centered in our purpose guides us in our priorities as we choose how to spend our day.  Being clear about and filled with purpose brings a deep peace and calm that isn’t dependent on outside circumstances and influences.  Joanna Gaines talked about this realization when she wrote, “I started owning who I am, realizing that I was unique and that God had a unique purpose for me.  I’d spent my whole life worrying about what people thought about me or whether I was good enough or thinking about what I should be doing instead of really digging down to find out what I wanted to do.” 

Once you really center yourself in your own God-given purposes, it doesn’t mean life will be easy, but it does mean the why of your life will direct the how you live your life and what you fill your life with.

When people talk about purpose, or mission, they often talk about the one thing you were born to do.  I believe that we are born to do certain things, but not just one.  There are layers to our purpose.  There are layers to our life mission. And there are seasons to life mission. 

Let me give you an example of my own life. When I was in middle school, I took a class that taught me just a bit about four different languages: French, Spanish, German, and Russian.  I was drawn to Russian and promised myself I would learn more someday.  They didn’t offer Russian in my high school (I took French instead), but when I got to college, I enrolled in and enjoyed Russian classes.  Concurrently, I was fascinated by Russian culture and history.  In college, I met up with some exchange students from Russia and asked them a billion questions about their culture.  For some reason, I was drawn to this culture, and I decided I needed to move there, not forever, but not as a tourist either.

One day, someone told me about a poster they’d seen about an opportunity to go teach English in Russia to children.  They even walked me over and showed me the poster.  My first response?  “Oh, I would never be brave enough to do that.”  But the thought germinated in the back of my mind, and lo and behold, one year later I was applying.

I ended up teaching English in Russia, and then, with the same company, opening a new English-teaching program in Belarus, spending a total of a year and a half teaching English to children ages 4 to 8.  It was delightful.  But more than that, it felt like the place I was meant to be.  I didn’t change the world, but I like to think I influenced a few for good.  And certainly, I was changed as I stretched myself.  And I can see how this experience changed my character, my perceptions, and my experience which helped me form other things moving forward.

I sincerely believe that my time in Russia and Belarus was part of my ‘Great Work’.  And it all happened before I was 22 years old!  There are pieces to life mission and purpose, there are seasons in life, and life is one big journey that we don’t get to figure out in its entirety when we’re young and deciding our future.  This life is a journey of purposes, and again, it’s not something we figure out in its entirety and then just live. It’s something we discover as we live.  To quote Joanna Gaines again:  “It all seemed to be working out in that perfectly messy way life works when you trust in God and his plans for your life rather than focusing on your own.”

And I have to add, that feeling I described – the feeling that I was in the exact place I was meant to be – was just as strong, or stronger, when I chose not to go to China to do the same thing, and when I married my husband and in my role of mother. Nourishing this intuition and divine help is key to discovering Great Work Purposes.

But the discussion of purpose and mission is deeper than Great Work Purposes.  I have felt this intuitively for a very long time, but I love how Lisa Grace Byrnes articulated it, so I’m going to use the model she taught me to move through this.

She says:  “I had a hard time with the concept of purpose for a long time in my life.  I was one of those people who somewhere along the line assumed that purpose was knowing a defined, clear way that you were meant to contribute to the world….  I was always bothered that I didn’t have a guiding purpose.  I can remember praying that God would “reveal” this to me so I would know what I should be doing and feel the contentment and satisfaction of knowing I was on ‘my path’” but then she realized:  “First of all, I believe we have many purposes…that it is a myth to think there is one capitol P purpose in your life that defines and dictates everything else. But I believe there is an order to the purposes we all have. And my primary purpose is the same as your primary purpose – which is the same as every other human being’s primary purpose in the world.  Your primary purpose is to develop into your fullest potential.”

Here’s layer one of purpose then:  Divine Purpose

Divine Purpose

To put it succinctly, this purpose is about becoming the best you possible. 

It is about personal growth and meaningful contribution, and the symbiotic relationship of both of those.

Every person born has inherent worth.  Just because you exist. 

You came as your unique self with gifts and abilities and inclinations and fears – the whole package is part of this – and each person on earth, to feel fulfilled and purpose-filled, must refine and develop this uniqueness (through personal growth) and then use that to meaningfully contribute in your sphere of influence.

That’s it!  This layer alone could take a lifetime of dedication and bring fulfillment.  And is the foundation of all the other layers.

The significance of this one is that everyone has this mission, from the moment they are born (just watch a two year old and notice their dedication to personal growth and meaningful contribution and you’ll know what I mean).  It is God-given, inherent, and divine.  Just because you exist.

Sacred Role Purposes

The second layer of purpose is your Sacred Role Purposes. These are the God-given purposes and roles you step into, sometimes simply because you are born. This is the role of son, daughter, parent, sibling, spouse, aunt, etc.

Let me tell you a bit about Joanna Gaines.  If you know the show, Fixer Upper, you’ve heard of her and her husband, Chip.  They do renovation and redesign of houses – she does the designing and decorating, he and his team do the physical work of rebuilding.  My husband and I have watched it before, and we enjoyed it, especially because of the family aspect of the show.

So when I saw Magnolia Story as a free kindle ebook a few years ago, I thought, Why not?  and downloaded it.  I found a true gem in this book, and I have reflected on its themes – purpose, life mission, divine roles, relationships – again and again.

I’m going to skip to the middle of her story. At this point, Chip and Joanna were married, and Joanna was running a shop full of interior design items.  She was a new mom, and her baby went with her to the shop each day.  But when she was expecting her second baby, the clear inspiration she received was to stay home with her babies.  Here’s what she says:  “What I’m trying to say is that I truly loved everything about that shop.  But the voice just kept telling me, Jo, it’s time. I wrestled with it for weeks until finally I felt it in my heart….  As much as I didn’t want it to be true, I could no longer deny that the voice was right…. That’s when I heard that gentle whisper, Joanna, if you trust me with your dreams, I’ll take them further than you could have ever imagined. It’s no easy thing to trust in God… but I did it.  I heeded his voice, and somehow I found peace about it.”

Later she said, “There is always peace when I finally decide to obey that voice.”

Motherhood is one example of a Sacred Role Purpose.  This is how Lisa Grace Byrnes describes these:  “Sacred purposes are identity roles that I stepped into – mother, wife, daughter, sacred roles that I entered into or I was given at birth that feel like deeper covenants that are going to remain with me for my whole life.  I can’t ever not be a mother.”   

These roles are absolutely part of our purpose.  And we should never feel like if we are focusing for a season on a particular sacred role that we are not living up to our fullest potential. 

Being a caring, respectful sister, for example, or a respectful, serving son are part of these sacred life purposes. And sometimes, with some of these roles, it can and should encompass all of our life and time.

And yet we need to be careful in this role too.  If we put our entire sense of worth into this role, that puts a little bit too much power into things outside of our control!  What if our parents don’t understand us? What if our spouse doesn’t appreciate everything about us?  What if our children argue?  If we take those things as attacks on our own personal worth or our own personal contribution to society, then it feels out of our control and can take away from our centered peace. 

Lisa Grace Byrnes talks about her own journey in motherhood.  Maybe you can relate to what she says:  “…one of my early mistakes in motherhood was setting up these expectations around purpose and motherhood— … I immediately began to think of it as a solution to this ‘purpose seeking’ journey I was on.  I can remember, when I became a mother saying “Now, I get it.  Now, this is my purpose.”  .. and partly this was true- a very specific and new purpose was born when I became a mother- because I fundamentally changed, who I was, my identity expanded when I stepped into the role of motherhood- and with that does come elements of a purpose.  But for me, I felt all the more like a failure when motherhood brought up feelings of discontentment.  When motherhood didn’t ‘complete’ me.  And maybe that was where it all went wrong. Somehow I had this subconscious belief that if I could just find my purpose, I would feel complete. And if motherhood was my purpose, then motherhood in and of itself- would complete me. Which set up this underlying expectation that having children should complete me. But really, that’s a pretty heavy expectation to have and put on these beautiful little beings, don’t you think?”

I would add, that’s a pretty heave expectation to put on any person in our sphere – it isn’t the role of our parents to complete us.  It isn’t the role of our siblings to complete us.  It isn’t even the role of our spouse to complete us. 

And no matter what the people in our lives choose to do or how they treat us, it doesn’t diminish our value or our ability to fulfill this sacred purpose to the best of our ability.

Lisa Grace Byrnes goes on to say about her children, “I now know that I’m not meant to complete them and they are not meant to complete me–in fact we have completely different roles in each other’s life~ but completing each other is not one of them.”

What you are in charge of in this layer is how you show up.  And this is, again, a process you can spend a lifetime working on!  But progress and effort count. 

I’ve made some personal reflection pages (available below) if you’d like to dig in deeper in this layer (and all the layers).  This is reflective work on how you imagine presenting your best self as you fulfill these sacred purposes

Great Work Purposes

The last layer of this model of Life Purpose or Mission is the Great Work tier.  This is the layer that most people think of when they think of Purpose or Mission.  This is your offering of your unique gifts to produce your unique contribution to the world.  And this can change over a lifetime!  I think my Russia/Belarus experience fits into a Great Work Purpose, but I don’t think it’s my only one. 

Great Work Purposes can be an extension of Sacred Purposes.  For me, educating my children and teaching in the homeschool community is absolutely part of my Great Work, and I feel it’s an extension of my Sacred Purpose of mother.

Don’t let the scope of this scare you off.  I don’t think you actually need to seek a Great Work Purpose. 

What you do need to do is develop your character, develop your own unique gifts, reach out to serve, and your Great Work will just happen. 

And if it’s not huge and world renowned like Mother Teresa’s, no matter.  She had her role to fulfill, and you have yours.

It’s beyond the purpose of today’s discussion to go into finding your Great Work.  There is much we could say about the topic, and perhaps someday, we’ll do just that.  Today’s purpose is simply to be aware of the layers of purpose and mission, get clear on how we want to present ourselves in those different layers, and to choose to cultivate parts of us that nourish those purposes in our lives.

So if you can’t think of a Great Work Purpose right now, don’t worry about it. But here’s a clue to get you started on that process, and a segue into the next thing I want to talk about:

“the closer we get to living to our truest selves, we also simultaneously will be contributing the most to the world and those we love.”  (Lisa Grace Byrnes)

Investing in Your Purposes

There is an order to this.  Did you catch that? It’s worth repeating:  “the closer we get to living to our truest selves, we also simultaneously will be contributing the most to the world and those we love.”

When we’re talking about the layers, we talk about them in a certain order intentionally. 

The core is your Divine Purpose – the one that just is because you are a daughter or son of God.  The personal growth we talked about with that purpose, the refining and developing our own innate strengths, is the foundation of all other purposes.

Audrey Rindlisbacher said, “mission is simply a by-product of becoming a certain kind of person.” 

Our Divine Purpose must always be nurtured, in any season of life.  Our first layer needs to be intact to give our best self to our second and third layer purposes.  Dawn Ascanio gives advice on how this is to be done:

“do your life so that you are taking steps regularly, even slow or tiny steps, in the directions that matter most to you.  It’s a way of living fully with a feeling of purpose in many of the ways you spend your time, not just a single ‘life purpose’.”

Intentionally move in the right direction, become the kind of person you’d like to be, live your truest self (and give yourself grace along the way) – and discover the peace and calm that comes from living a life of purpose.

I saw this uncredited quote on a blog:  “a powerful antidote for stress and fatigue is whole heartedness – something you believe in.”  I love the term “whole heartedness”.  This implies that the heart is so wholly focused that there isn’t room for other things.  Crafting a whole-hearted life begins by focusing on developing your unique gifts and meaningfully contributing to those around you.

Hopefully the refection questions will help you define these, or remind you of things you already know, so that you can choose your focus again.  What is your purpose?

Making Time and Giving Grace

One last category worth discussing on this topic:  some of you may feel you know what your purposes are, but you feel as if your efforts are thwarted by things outside your control.  They may very well be! Lack of funds, lack of time, lack of support, other’s lack of vision.  They are real concerns.

Again, we are only in charge of ourselves.  We can certainly influence others.  We can ask others for help.  We can seek for a support group.  But ultimately, everyone else’s choices belong to them.  So what does one do when one feels frustrated in the effort?

In a nutshell, be prayerful, own what you can control and leave the rest for another time. Act on those things you have control of, even if it is just the preparation phase. And trust. Purposes are God-given. In the end, if you keep moving forward, seeking that inspiration, you’ll look back and see the hand of Providence guiding your life in ways you just can’t see looking forward.

I’ll end with advice from Joanna Gaines:  “Go and find what it is that inspires you, go and find what it is that you love, and go do that until it hurts.  Don’t quit, and don’t give up.  The reward is just around the corner.  And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice.”