Two Important (Maybe) Ideas

I had a really good talk with a dear friend today.  There are two important things I learned, or ideas that we discussed.  1.  Maybe God didn’t answer my prayers because I have to do it on my own.  2.  Maybe the purpose of life is to live purposefully.  

So, let’s look at the first idea.  I was telling my friend about my prayers long ago to feel or know that I was a child of God, that I was important, and trying to pray away the depression, praying for an end to it; and that I never felt any answers.  So I quit praying and I've been doubting the existence of God ever since, despite my religious upbringing and my continued participation in my church.  But today, while talking with my friend, I reflected on the time when Sam was a little boy trying to learn how to write the letter “S.”  He was so frustrated and mad because he couldn’t do it, and he thought he’d never get it.  And I sat back knowing, absolutely KNOWING, that he’d one day learn to write the letter "S" and he’d have no problems with it.  However, I couldn’t do it for him.  He had to figure it out on his own, through practice, through trial and error.  I could show him the basic mechanics of what an “S” looked like, how to hold the pencil, etc., but I could not do it for him.  So maybe God can’t answer my prayer, maybe I have to do it on my own.  I’ve been taught the basic mechanics, but maybe overcoming this depression and feeling like a daughter of God has to be something I come to on my own.  Maybe God KNOWS I can do it and will do it, but I have to learn it on my own, just like Sam had to learn how to write his name on his own.  As I told my friend this and talked through this idea it has just felt right to me.  I felt such overwhelming emotion as I talked about this that I think maybe I’m on to something true here.  Maybe God is watching me, knowing without any doubt that I will make it through this and be glorious some day. And maybe it's just a matter of time before I know my real value and worth as a daughter of God.

This reminds me of a something Sue Bender wrote in “Everyday Sacred.”  She was talking about breaking bowls, purposefully breaking them and then gluing them back together.  She writes:

“In the past, no matter what I did or accomplished, I still felt like something was missing.  When I put the pieces of my cracked pot together, I saw that nothing was missing.  

Nothing.

I saw that I was WHOLE.

That same week a letter came from a woman who had spent years living with and writing about the Shakers.  In her letter I read, “The Latin root of the word ‘perfect’ means only ‘finished,’ not ‘without flaws.’”

We start out whole.  Complete.  Along the way, we may feel that something is wrong, or missing.  We aren’t the way we’d like to be or the way we think we should be.  A crossroads, a new stage in life, a turning point, a crisis, when we feel we may crack, or we do crack, can be a difficult, frightening time. 

And sometimes we deliberately crack our own bowl.

With time and great care and tender patience, we can reexamine the pieces, knowing that when we are ready, a solution will come.  We can glue the pieces back together.

This bowl looks far more interesting, more beautiful than before it broke.  The pieces are the same, but it’s a different bowl than when I started.”

Maybe for these last several years I’ve been going through the bowl cracking process.  I’ve been cracking, my life has been cracking.  And maybe, just maybe, I’m at the point of gluing the bowl back together.  And maybe God just has had to sit and watch me do this all, has had to let me do it myself.  

Now, to the second idea:  Maybe the purpose of life is to live purposefully.  Maybe it’s about making decisions on purpose—deciding how we are going to treat other people, other organisms, the planet; living each moment with purpose.  Purposefully picking up that piece of trash.  Purposefully putting the grocery cart back to the right spot.  Purposefully being kind to a stranger, to a friend, to our children, to our spouse.  Making a conscientious choice in what we do each and every day, each and every moment.  Maybe when we start living like that, we find purpose to our life.  

I feel good and excited about these ideas.  I feel like I may be onto something.  I realize I felt this way a couple of weeks ago with the idea that the purpose of life is relationships.  I felt really good for about 2 days, and then slumped back down.  But that’s okay.  I do think the purpose probably has something to do with relationships.  And living purposefully is also a part of it.  And cracking our bowls and gluing them back together is part of it too.  I feel like I’m gaining pieces of the answer to this quest I’m on.  I don’t have it all, yet, but maybe I have faith that someday I will figure it all out.  And finding these pieces and putting them together like a puzzle is giving me a feeling of empowerment.  It’s nice.  I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll take it for now.  For now, it is enough.