Purpose

Many of you who meander through here might just be wondering what is the purpose of all of this. Me too. That probably wasn’t the response that you were looking for; not a real confidence builder, right? I mean let’s face it, time is limited and you can’t spend all day looking at information that doesn’t have some meaning behind it or will be able to enrich your life in some manner. I know I can’t. Yet, somehow, purpose is only found in what you’re looking for – not what you’re looking at.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no special literary genius or someone who has the pulse of the masses, able to sway their thoughts and opinions on matters of relevance. No, I’m just like you in many ways but not in many others. Let me give you some history of how a normal guy became someone looking for something specific.

In the spring of 1994 the life of my family turned upside down, inside out, stretched butt first through a knot hole, or any other metaphor that can possibly describe the effect of sh*t hitting the fan. My youngest daughter was born paralyzed from the neck down, unable to breath or move on her own. We spent the first six months of her life in the hospital, trying to determine the reason and stabilize her to bring her home.

Doctors, being the natural pessimistic sort who seem at times more concerned about protecting their practice than make a flippant boast which could be seen as a promise, told us that in cases like this (a funny expression now, since they had never seen anything like this) the patient doesn’t typically live past the age of two. The lungs are more susceptible to pneumonia, limbs become dis-jointed because of their weight and need to be amputated which can lead to infections… yada, yada. The grim reaper was definitely outclassed by these heralds of doom and gloom on that day.

Well, fast forward to today. Like training a puppy not to pee in the house, we have had occasion to rub the doctor’s smell center in the crap that spewed from their pie hole that day. We did it with dignity though – they after all are on the same journey we all are. None of the things they prophesied came to pass and our daughter, while still in the same medical condition lives at home with us and we, along with a cadre of nurses and health care aficionados, keep her living and moving through the life of a vibrant young woman with the same hopes and dreams just like any other woman of her age.

In the course of living this life and its demands we did what everyone else has done at one time or another: We cried out for purpose, meaning, help, answers, relief, peace, and life. We sought God.

Situations like ours truly make you aware that there is not a damn thing you can do…ever. We looked for the one thing that only one person could provide: A miracle. You don’t have to have a belief in God to believe in miracles – just look at our political arena to understand this. Our world was in chaos and only a word filled with hope could transform it to its intended design. We developed faith, fostered it, nurtured it, always under the hope of a miracle coming any moment.

We latched onto anyone and anything that supported our view for the miraculous. Suddenly, we were surrounded by people seeking their own miracle, each of us flailing in the sea of chaos trying to keep our head… (drowning is not an apt metaphor here because sanity is more desirable than trying to breath). We all pitched shrines to miracles we never saw but heard about all in the name of stirring our faith, as if our faith ever was in danger of burning in the pot of unreconciled despair. Our belief in a miracle working God took us far and wide, into relationships and out of relationship all in order to grab our intended hope. Yet…

Grace came. No, we arrived at grace. Wearied, battered by prolonged unfulfilled hope, we reached the shores to the last vestiges of a lost realm. No one truly knew what it looked like – still don’t – but it began a process of clearing the debris of thoughts, deep, almost hidden thoughts that were never to be spoken in mixed company or in family gatherings. We began to breath with ease an air distinct yet familiar, until …It sucker punched us!

Structures began to wobble and relationships, once thought to be everlasting, became one of the “this (fill in the blank) is the last thing I’ll ever believe…” kind of ships that pass in the dark soul of the night, ever vigilant for icebergs or cold shoulders. Suddenly, vast communities spawned by the hot inflation of the dogma and doctrine of mankind were pricked by the pierced message of a supernatural love that a kind man extended to all through a last shuddering breath. All, and also nothing, in the same moment. Faith and hope; life and death. Purpose, where purpose shouldn’t be – no it can’t be found, today even as then.

This is the journey I’m on. I know not the destination since apparently, I have already arrived. However, I keep traveling, looking at the sights with new lenses which often appear to be kaleidoscopic in nature. I find myself these days sometimes waxing poetics more than waxing the car; and seem to be immersed in the maps of others who have taken this same journey trying to recognize the ancient landmarks along a “civilized” contour.

Consider this the journal of my path towards a hope I still intend to possess, yet now, without the intentionality of a purpose devoid of process. After all, isn’t your purpose a process … a process of discovery.