Where Can I Find the Purpose of Life?

(Listen to the audio version of this article here.)

It started when I was 19: a sudden heaviness in my lungs and edginess I couldn’t shake. As soon as I left home, the weight of the world’s toughest questions began needling me like a three-year-old. The world’s pressures of womanhood becoming equally as frustrating. Suffocating. I’d lay in bed at night in angst and visualize scenes captured by the Hubble telescope: a galaxy, a multitude of galaxies, that speak to the infinite. I’d think about the world and its enormity. The endless possibilities. And then I’d ponder this strange reality, in contrast: the one where I, a woman, had a little path to find. A way. A purpose.

I couldn’t help but wonder, in the context of such vastness, and at the same time the contradiction of the little woman box I somehow needed to fit nicely in: who am I and what, as the poet Mary Oliver said, “am I to do with my one wild and precious life?”

Taking Time to Wonder

The panic subsided by my 20s as the time I had for pondering was replaced by college, rent, car payments, and boyfriends. Whether I was ready or not, I was growing into being an adult. I soon learned that there wasn’t much time to wonder.

Fast forward and my life looks much different with kids, a husband, and all the trimmings. And still, this time to reflect alludes me if I let it. But every so often, in the graceful space of things, I do have some space (if I will put my phone down and allow it) to wonder. If I am quiet, I can reach into the stars and ask: What is the purpose of life?

Is it something grand? Deserving of its own procession or parade or a hundred, thousand, million likes—shared and re-posted as Reels and TikToks, a multitude dancing? Or is the purpose of my life minuscule? A drop in the ocean. A sprinkle on a cupcake. A grain of sand against the backdrop of eternity. Something that happens quietly in the distance like morning mountain dawn.

Can the purpose of my life be found in monumental things? The mountains of marriage and childbirth or diplomas and career and high-heel clicks down long, marble halls? Or is it in the valleys of death and hardship? Scraping by with stacks of unpaid bills. Falling against tombstones. Mascara puddles.

Is my life defined by my parents? My family? My friendships? My children? My spouse? Or the vacancy of these people in my life? An empty seat at the dining room table. Or am I what I do? How I spend my waking hours? Cleaning. Cooking. Talking. Mothering. Writing. Laughing. Sharing. Yelling. Building. Singing. Bathing. Teaching. Plowing. Crying. Sorting. Walking. Lifting. Driving. Painting. Cursing. Ad infinitum.

Am I what I believe? The faith I hold—or don’t? The God I struggle with or praise? Run from or snuggle into? The God whose hands rest on my shoulders either way.

Will my life be measured by what I have or buy or show? Matching pajamas. Marker brows. Sparkling filters. Steps of children. Miles per hour. White kitchen. Barnwood. New. Shining. Rotting. Or will my legacy be defined by the people I have touched and helped and loved?

What is the purpose of my life, and how am I defined? Do you decide? Or, does the algorithm? Or, do I?

Or—

What God Says About My Purpose

Can I walk away from both of these cramped places: your expectations and my own for what my life needs to be or how I find my purpose as if it is something I’ve lost along the way, like an old earring?

Instead, can I listen to the God who says: I have been made in His image. I am precious in His sight. I have been created to do good works that have been prepared in advance for me to do. I am his child, his daughter, his sister, his beloved friend.

What defines me is love. Like the Son, my purpose is to glorify. Shine. Praise. Worship. Seek peace and extend thankfulness. Pick up my cross and defy culture. Pray without ceasing. Laugh with my enemies. Wash my neighbor’s feet. Rejoice and mourn. Heal and weep. Live with mercy and die with grace. Balance on the edge of Kingdom come.

To love and be loved, that is all. That is enough.

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:16