purpose.

“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.” - Hans Urs von Balthasar

If you were to take a poll of several people who found themselves to be depressed, more often than not, I’d be willing to bet that many of those same people felt as though they don’t know exactly what they were placed on this Earth to do. How does one continue on when they have confronted this question and still come up empty handed?

For a long time, I was that person. I have fought against the darkness, that feeling of utter despair and hopelessness of just not knowing how to be. This journey back to my faith has been a long one, with many areas of which I have stumbled through. It is only recently that I have been able to hear God as he has gently reminded me that I matter, and with stories from my childhood I have long since forgotten.

Because I should be dead right now. I shouldn’t even be living.

When I was little, there were several close calls that could have easily swept me right off this Earth. Twice when I was a toddler I got out of our backyard, the second time my Father found me at the edge of a cliff. I had apparently scaled a chain link fence to escape our property, and now here I was teetering between literal life and death. One false move from my Dad and over the cliff I would have gone. I was quickly yanked back to safety (and spanked, rightfully so). When I was five, I left our home and set off around our neighborhood attempting to sell pages out of my coloring book for five dollars a piece. I don’t remember a lot about that day, but my parents said I was gone for quite a while. I managed to trot back home to safety (and avoided a spanking this time by hiding behind my Mom). When I was seven, a man and a woman approached me one day while I was playing outside and claimed to have lost their children. They said they needed my help, and asked that I go with them in their car. I declined, twice, because I knew better than to go off with strangers. I do remember giving them directions to the nearest park where I thought they could find their children, I do not remember feeling like I was in danger. But my parents explained what this was to me later.

I won’t even begin to expound the numerous occasions as a teenager where I made many, many bad decisions that could have, and should have, killed me. Let’s not even get into my antics during my college years. The point is, in all of the situations above I was just a vulnerable little kid and the odds were stacked against me for survival. So why, then, did I make it? Why am I here today? Simply because the hand of God was on me keeping steady watch over my life. I am reminded of this when I read the following, Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip - he who watches over you will not slumber.

That verse fills me with enormous gratitude and comfort. To know that the Creator of the Heavens never sleeps, with an eye directed always carefully on his children.

So that brings us to the more important question - why? Why help me, this curious and stupid little kid who has a penchant for wandering off? It’s not because I am so great or special that He sees me as deserving life more than any other. No. There is a greater plan at work here, and we all have a role in it.

C.S. Lewis once said that Christ “died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, he would have done no less.”

I believe that statement to be at the heart of all that we are and all that we do. We are here to love one another, and to save one another. When Christ said to go and make disciples of all nations, this wasn’t a directive with an agenda to spread an ideology. This was to save souls. I didn’t have the Lord watching over my life because I’m here to do nothing, and it’s also not necessarily because I’m meant to be some huge public figure bringing thousands to Christ.

This could be, and very likely is, as simple as one life that needs saving. One life that needs help, love, assurance, and fellowship. I could be here, living and breathing and occasionally indulging in more dessert than I should, because God has seen to it that there is one person I am going to cross paths with that I am going to help in some way. I don’t know when, or how, but I do know that I joyfully take this task on with all that He has given me to accomplish it. I do this because the Lord many years ago sent someone into my life who would do the same for me.

I want to take this opportunity to thank that person, one of my best friends and co-blogger here, Darbi. I had the advantage of growing up with the Word of God in my life, surrounded by family who raised me with that knowledge. I wrote a post before about how I fell away from that for awhile, and I feel the need pressing upon me to state that Darbi was instrumental in bringing me back around to the truth of my life. She did so patiently, without condescension and judgment over the many horrible mistakes I was making. No one knows this, but there were many emails exchanged between her and I where I would continually bombard her with theological questions. I do not envy the place that I put her in, because these were not easy questions to answer and she had to know that my faith was hanging in the balance. Can you imagine the pressure? Yet she did it. Sometimes I had to wait several days for a response while she prayed for the words, but she always came through. The Lord was at work in her, to help me. He is at work in me the same way, to help others.

You could call this a trickle or domino effect, either way it is the same thing. There is a master plan, and you matter. You may not think you do, but I guarantee if you happened upon this post it is for a reason. God thinks you need to know. And I don’t brush off these signs anymore as coincidences because learning to listen to them has truly changed my life.

All of us matter, that’s what this thing called life is about. We may not always understand the plan or how to get there, but that isn’t really our job. Your purpose may not look like what you thought it would or even what you want it to, but I guarantee the Creator of the Heavens knows what He’s doing. He’s been at it awhile. And he knows exactly how to get you where you need to be.

Do small things with great love. You are meant to serve, and God will use you. Whether you decide to be a Judas or a John is up to you.