The Risk in Purpose

It's January 7th.  Many people who felt spurred to action a mere week ago are finding it tough to get out of warm beds an hour earlier to exercise their bodies, or are tired of the diet food they've been trying to eat, or gagging on the fresh juice they're making with Christmas gifted blenders.

The sag of January comes in as the shine of December wears off.  We want to do better, but struggle to pull the motivation out of weary hearts and tired bodies.

I don't make resolutions, but exist in a continual place of wanting to do better.  Be more. Accomplish all I am meant to reach.  I try to find the sweet spot between loving who I am in this moment with longing for what is ahead.  I don't often find that sweet spot.

I am reading the book "The Road To Becoming" by Jenny Simmons (formerly of Addison Road) she discusses this place this way:
Perhaps you know what it feels like to dread the day at hand. Your plans have changed, failed, or come to a screeching halt and you are living in the in-between.  Not who you were and not yet who you might become.  (pg. 4) 

I find myself standing at the beginning of a full year stretched out ahead of me and I want more. I know I have purpose; work to do here. With my family, my own life, my relationships.  I have spent the last two years devastated, then healing, then growing, and this promises to be a year of risk. Risk that will bring me out of fear and intimidation into the life created for me to live.

Frustratingly, I also find myself toggling back and forth between grand courage, and crushing fear.  I worry that I will be rejected and will fail, and then I worry that I won't fail and will instead walk into my own purpose.  As backwards as that sounds, it takes great energy, courage and faith to live fully present in your purpose.  It is easier to hide, make excuses, avoid risk and do what everyone else is doing.  I'm terrified to open the door and find my self fully there.

To avoid it, I sink into words from people who are somehow walking in their purpose.  Women who have pulled themselves into public art somehow- from singing, to writing, speaking and creating.  Women who have found a way to get others to hear what they have to say; and I scan the pages, and soak in the words hungry for the truth bomb that will alight my heart and spur me to my own purpose, and yet that reading and scanning, and devouring is only a prolonging of my own work. A distraction bathed in some cloth of worthiness as I try to convince myself the time used will be beneficial to my own purpose.  And another day closes as I look to see my own words were not cultivated on paper. My own heart didn't open to an outsider and risk not just rejection but acceptance. Another day where I hid in the planning and the gonna-get-to-it-one-of-these-days. So today I did it.  I took a baby step in my own purpose. One that can bring rejection, and yet even in that I breathe a little fuller today knowing that this sunset will bring with it a bit of action.  And tomorrow will dawn with the chance to risk a bit more.  I'm headed into my office space where it is quiet and set apart to dream, and write, and ask God what doors to knock on… and tonight I will rest my head on the soft pillow of accomplishment.  Setting aside for a bit what others have to say about finding my purpose, and instead waiting to hear from the one who has purposed me.