What This Life is For

Pope Francis’ remarks recently chastising married couples for choosing not to have children stung me, because that was my husband and me for a long time. And I don’t harbor any animosity toward those families which consist only of a man and wife (and maybe a dog and cat). No, it’s not animosity or judgment or hate. Nothing of the kind. What I do feel is sorrow—sorrow in the heart of God Who longs to shower the earth with the blessing of so many children, and all the good that children bring forth into our existence here, if we only knew. If we only knew. And I feel sorrow also for the moms- and dads-to-be who will never be, for all the potential blessing unrealized.  This is my story.

I am given one short life to live on this earth. What is it for?

When I was small, I curled myself into the palm of God with joy, knowing that’s where I belonged. I had a special big rock in our front yard, and God met with me there.

At 14, I would sit alone at our family’s big kitchen table with my Bible and just love loving Jesus, and love Him loving me, and it was enough.

At 23, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and wept in the arms of my God who cradled me in my grief and depression. He was my Comforter and my Healer in a confusing time.

These moments stand out in my memory because in them I was my Father’s and He was mine. Nothing else mattered. In these fleeting moments, the questions were quelled.

You know the questions I’m talking about: what is your passion what is your purpose what is your calling what is your work what is your worth what are you doing with your life…

Worrisome questions like these blow away like so much dust when the wind of God descends.

But it’s hard to always remain in the intimate space where God assures me with His presence that I am o.k., that I am enough, that He is enough. To abide. The wind of the Spirit falls silent in all the noise of my whirling, and the dust settles again… and the thought comes creeping in: my life, what is it for?

I grew up and married. Somehow, in being a grown-up, curling myself into the palm of God, or basking in the love of the Father, or sitting cross-legged on the floor in weeping worship seemed like things I would have to leave behind. I busied myself with grown-up type things. I took classes and learned to cook and studied German and earned my Master’s Degree and my teaching credential, but I didn’t want to teach. I swam in the morning and made cocktails we hadn’t ever tried from my Bartender’s Guide book (a terrific wedding gift, by the way) in the afternoon and sat in the shade of the back deck and read Walt Whitman’s The Leaves of Grass and felt kind of lost… kind of vaguely purposeless…

what is your passion what is your purpose what is your calling what is your work what is your worth what are you doing with your life…what is life for?

There they were again. The questions.

(Happiness and true contentment can be elusive things. Admit it.)

Friends had babies, and I watched them do this very normal thing and thought oh my god I don’t want that

because I had forgotten and wasn’t sure what my particular life was for, and until I could figure that out I couldn’t possibly have a child. What would I tell him? Would I admit to him that his life served as a sort of distraction for me, so I could busy myself with diapers and baby things and mommy and me classes and not feel the hollow purposelessness of life?

My married friends asked me why don’t you want to have children? And I didn’t know how to answer them. I said things like I wasn’t ready or we were “trigger shy.” And so I became pseudo-contented with our clean and tidy house, my freedom to write all day or swim or nap, without the complication and responsibility and messiness and demands and inconvenience of children.

I turned 35. And I knew. Deep, deep down below all the fear and confusion and uncertainty I knew that if I did not give God one chance, that I would one day lay alone on my death bed and regret not having given Him one chance to answer the question: would I be a mother? So we gave God one chance. I squeezed my eyes closed and…

jumped.

A leap of faith—opening  myself up to the will of God in spite of my fear and risking conceiving, saying ok I trust You--

this leap of faith changed my existence from one of purposelessness to one of usefulness. NOW I am a useful thing in the hand of God. Quickly I learned that in mothering my child, even while he was in my body, my life was used up. And in growing him up in the womb of our home my passion my purpose my calling my work my worth my what are you doing with your life, all of it, is planted, then, in the soil of his life, and so on, and so on…

It has nothing to do with me anymore. It’s all, every bit of it, in service to Him Who saw fit to grace me with the blessing of a real God-breathed soul wrapped in the body of a noisy boy, a blessing that in my ignorance I believed to be a hardship, a blessing not in any of the ways we typically understand blessing to be, a distinctly God-blessing.

Think of the miracle of this: A woman can partner with the Maker of All Things and bring new life into the world, God willing. I almost missed out on that and all the lessons of motherhood because I didn’t have understanding. I didn’t comprehend that besides God Himself, there is no greater treasure than children.

As a mother, I curl myself and my son in the palm of God and this is my worship now. My eyes are filled with the miracle of life as I watch the carefree dancing of a child who could never have been had I not trusted. It is a weighty responsibility we women have, a sacred business, because if we are not purposefully quieting the pesky questions by pressing through them to the Answer, which is not a thing or an idea but a Person, Who is the very Person of God… and refusing to refuse, then, to muster up the courage to trust, to squeeze our eyes closed and take that leap…

we will not learn what this life is for.

This one small life, friend, is for spending. 

"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." 

Luke 6:38