LIFE ON PURPOSE

One of the things I love about having an intimate relationship with God is the way He talks to us. Recently He has been giving me a very direct message surrounding: life on purpose and/or living on purpose. It has come at me in at least three very clear and distinct ways over the last week: in a book a friend suggested, in a Saturday morning meeting and in a recent worship service.

This morning in my time of prayer and meditation I had to face the fact that so much of my living on purpose and according to the things that really make me happy - I simply gave up on. I started to think about some of the goals that I wrote in my high school memory book and I how I would envision my home adorned with art pieces vibrant with color and who speak to who I am. Somewhere along the way, I gave up on seeking out the things in people that wonderfully and positively challenge me and I started to allow to many "just anybodies" in. While I have also learned to detox people, behaviors and insecurities; I was amazed in those quiet moments this morning about the amount of intrinsic joy and energy I had lost to the matters pre-detoxification.

I had to admit to myself, that I am still the woman who wants to have four sons frolicking around her, as I read books on a private beach. I am still the woman who wants to pick up and travel to wherever my imagination can take me on a whim. I am still the woman who envisions a house with a wraparound porch and Southern summertime gatherings of artists, intellectuals and street corner philosophers all sipping delightful elixirs as we mingle; and the kids take over the yard. I am still the woman who wants to be surrounded and poured into by women of powerful integrity who can get deep yet can be real; and at it each gathering we pour into another woman who needs that assurance and compassion. That is life on purpose for me.

So I have decided that before my head hits the pillow tonight and my nine year old son bear hugs me into a thirty minute conversation that will surely prolong his bed time I am going to do something major to start life my life on purpose anew. I am going to re-script my life completely and purposely according to those things that God implanted in me in His initial thought of me. As I re-write that script, I am doing so from a mindset that God can and will redeem not only the time, but the energy loss to those things that are me that left me. Honestly, I can not really put a finger on when they left, how they left or why they did - but they have often resurfaced in my spirit and brought tears to my eyes as though they were mourning for me. Isn't that something? Your true spirit will mourn losing you when all it wants to do is live on purpose through you.

What does your life on purpose look like? Today, not scribble something quickly in your journal, but really think about what your purposed life designed by The Spirit and the things of your spirit really looks like? Write your way back to it. This is not about goals or to dos, no, this is about waking up every day and deciding that you have a purpose and every bit of your character, your decisions, your thoughts and your focus on that purpose should bring you joy. I am excited about having life on purpose - I pray you are as well.