“Many of us go through life with only a fuzzy sense of where we are going.” ~ Jeffrey Young, PhD and Janet Klosko, PhD, Reinventing Your Life: How to Break Free From Negative Life Patterns
Questioning
Where am I going in life? What is life all about? What am I here for? Is life just a constant struggle to nowhere in particular?
Many of us don’t think much about these questions until disaster hits. It’s not until something like moving on after divorce or cancer or death of a dream hits us in the face, that we are then forced to think deeply about life’s biggest questions.
Finding Clarity in the Haze
Our sense of where we’re going is often “fuzzy” at best. We seem mostly just tossed about by events and happenings that we have little or no control over. Is there even a destination we can pin down?
When I start pondering these questions, I think about one of my favorite books, The Hobbit. If you come upon the characters of that book in the middle of the story, you will find them stumbling along, fighting battles, surviving catastrophes, and on the brink of disaster and death at every turn.
“What’s the use?” Bilbo Baggins could say to himself. But if you look at the story from a 10,000 ft. viewpoint, you see that Bilbo, an ordinary person, is actually on an incredible, extra-ordinary journey. He was chosen to play a part in a story much bigger than himself.
Eternal Purpose
The Hobbit is about Eternal purposes; it’s a real life battle between good and evil, darkness and light. And though the characters often seem to be wandering along on their own and fighting the storms and the demons with nothing but their own determination to guide them, we discover they are in fact guided by the light of Truth, Justice, Good, Love, and Doing Right.
And though the players are often demoralized and discouraged, and some even die, the “place” they are going is real and shining in the distance.
What’s Your Story?
Where are you going? What bigger story are you a part of? Find God in your life’s story, and suddenly that fuzzy place in the distance will become flooded with light. Moving on after divorce with that new vision, you will undertake your daily battles with a bright, bold purpose full of peace and power.
“Later in one of his talks, Jesus said to the people, ‘I am the Light of the world. So if you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, for living light will flood your path.” ~ John 8:12 (The Living Bible)