"Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, Where is the director?
I want to see him."- Soren Kierkegaard
One morning last spring my friend Madeline dropped by for a visit. We sat in lounge chairs in my front yard on the little circle of synthetic green that, in Arizona, constitutes our ‘lawn.’ Our babies, born a week apart, ogled each other beneath their silk sunhats, groping now and then at a loose thread that sprouted between the faded squares of the quilt spread between us.
Lizzie, Madeline’s three-year-old, quickly made a game of tossing pennies into the stone fountain that stood beside the lawn. Occasionally, she trotted lightly round the fountain’s base and made us guess at her ‘wish.’ When I suggested that perhaps, since it was so terribly hot, she might have wished for a cold soda or an iced cream cone she said, “No,” more solemnly than I thought any three year old capable. “I asked God to make me more grateful.”
Madeline and I exchanged glances, at once baffled and delighted by her innocence and depth.
In between slow sips of iced tea we chit chatted about this and that – the books we were reading, a newly discovered recipe for chocolate dipped coconut macaroons – and at 11 o’clock shared a snack of fresh strawberries and crackers and cheese. By 11:30 the babies began to rub their eyes. “I believe our window is closing,” I said.
Lizzie looked at me quizzically. “Miss Heather,” she ventured, searching stoically about the yard, “which window is it?”
I started to ask what she meant, then stopped myself, having grasped her meaning. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said, making little effort to conceal my amusement, “that’s called a metaphor.”
“A meta-what?”
“A metaphor. For example, have you ever heard anyone say, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs?’
“Nooo.”
“I forgot. We are in the desert. How about: ‘She has a heart of stone?’”
Lizzie shook her head.
“Please,” interrupted Madeline, “stop while you’re ahead.”
“I don’t believe I ever was. Oh, Madeline. She's a dream.”
Madeline smiled. “Moments like this make it all worth it,” she said. Her voice trailed off. “…which is why I am embarrassed to admit I sometimes fear I will wake up one day and wonder if I wasted my life. I’m terrified that perhaps staying home was the easy answer.”
I squeezed Madeline’s arm and told her I didn’t think there were any easy answers.
But after we waved goodbye I lingered a few moments on my front step, feeling a stab of regret that I hadn’t a better response to my friend’s admission. If she could only see herself through my eyes, I thought. If only she knew the superiority of what she had gained compared to what she had lost…
Madeline met her husband in law school. They clerked together, graduated together, and after their marriage took a job together with a Phoenix firm. When they got married, Madeline was sure she’d return to work after having children. But two weeks into her maternity leave, her husband began to rethink his convictions regarding childrearing. He felt it was important for children to have their mother at home, particularly during their earliest years. Contrary to her own preferences, Madeline submitted to his wishes, choosing to honor him at the expense of her career.
Needless to say, she was anything but the kind of person who looked for easy answers to life’s difficulties.
I knew she loved being a mother. Yet I resonated with her fear - not because I disliked motherhood – but because I shared what I believed was Madeline’s underlying desire to live a purposeful life. I considered that all people harbor such desires – to live lives that have impact and, as worn out as the phrase may be, make some lasting difference in the larger world.
The desire for meaning and purpose are intrinsic to human nature. But how, I pondered, does one go about attaining these things? More specifically, how does one do so as a Christian?
THE PROBLEM
As a woman, the culture tells me that I should be able to have it all – love, career, children – and that I am justified in pursuing my dreams regardless of the cost to my husband, child, and – above all – my relationship with God. Moreover, I am given the subtle but unmistakable message that doing something “important” and being a full-time mother are mutually exclusive.
In contrast, Christianity teaches that in order to find my life I must lose it; and that the key to living is dying. Thus the two states are directly opposed. To live a life of temporal significance – according to the world’s value system – I must devote myself to self-actualization, whereas, to follow Jesus Christ, and live a life of eternal significance, requires self-sacrifice.
Madeline chose to sacrifice her own plans by submitting to the leadership of her husband. According to the outline I've just set out, she made the right choice.
But if so, why are there lingering doubts in her mind, and the minds of so many women like her? If what we are doing as wives, mothers, and children of God is really meaningful in His eyes, why does it so often feel mundane and purposeless?
THE SOLUTION
I have come to believe that life often feels meaningless because it is meaningless. King Solomon surveyed the nature of existence and concluded that all things are absurd, futile, and without meaning. Whether you are a lawyer a mother or a world-renown bird caller “all is vanity and striving after wind.”
A man may build an empire today but tomorrow no one will remember his name. Today’s bestseller is tomorrow’s trash. As the Psalmist says, “[There is] no remembrance of former [things]; neither shall there be [any] remembrance of [things] that are to come with [those] that shall come after. The Bible teaches that we cannot effect any lasting change in the universe. Whatever impact we are to have is in, through, and by the power of Christ at work in us “to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
Galations 5.6 says, “…In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
I thought again of Madeline. She was but one of a great many of the women I knew who had “put to death” their own plans in order to be obedient to the thing which they believed God had called them to. Madeline was staying home with her girls even though her preference was to practice law. Lucy, a surgeon, was working faithfully despite the fact that her real longing was to be a wife and mother. Jane, a doctor of history, had made great domestic sacrifices in order to care for her aging parents. And Elizabeth, who had been thrilled at the thought of quitting work after the birth of her first child, continued part-time after her baby was diagnosed with a serious illness, just so the family could maintain their health insurance!
All of these women have drastically different circumstances; none of them is living the life she envisioned for herself. Yet each is stewarding her circumstances with a faith that is expressing itself through love.
Thus it is neither working nor staying home, mothering nor remaining single that have any value. What is valuable is being faithful to God through the circumstances He gives – believing Him, hoping in Him, and staking our lives upon His Word.
Hebrews 4.2 says, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they [the Israelites] also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” If we are to live profitable lives, lives that, in God’s kingdom, “amount to something,” we must spend our energies believing in the gospel that was preached to us and the God which it reveals: a God who became man and died a sinner's death in order to reconcile the world to Himself. It is this gospel which must become the single, unifying power that holds our lives together; the framework upon which our life is built, and our every decision made.
Ephesians 2.10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has chosen beforehand that we should walk in them.” The American mindset is that I am my own workmanship. The world is my oyster. My destiny is my own. I must set my mind on the thing I want and work relentlessly until it is my possession. To do less is to prove myself a coward or, even worse, mediocre.
But if the Word of God is reliable and true, if we are His workmanship then, like any master artist, He decides precisely what we are to be. He chooses the medium (whether oil, watercolor, charcoal), the subject (perhaps a portrait or landscape) and the period in which the work that is my very soul is rendered. We choose whether to comply with Him in the making, whether – in faith – to persevere through the circumstances He chooses, letting Him have His way, or whether we will dig in our heels and in defiance say, No, You must use this color! And how about sketching me in a grand old house by the sea instead of out here in the desert or the mountains or the swamp?
What is more, if we are His workmanship – His works of art, living stones being built up into a spiritual house – then it is fair to say that He made us for the same reason that the painter paints her painting, or the sculptor sculpts her clay – she does so for the sheer joy of the thing! The process is certainly painstaking, but it is also delightful! And the outcome remains forever afterward something that brings glory to the Painter.
Proverbs 16.4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose. Even the wicked for the day of evil.” The clause “for its own purpose” comes from the Hebrew word maaneh which, when translated literally, means “for Himself, for His answer or response.” Thus the King James Bible says, “The Lord has made everything for himself.”
Thus we find our life’s purpose in being the thing God has made us to be. Specificities of application aside, He has made us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ; to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourself. Such love, if it is genuine, is demonstrated through obedience: “This is love for God: to obey his commands” (1 John 5.3). Like Christ, ours should be an obedience that persists, regardless of circumstances and irrespective of cost.
If we believe Him – and spend our lives seeking to conform to His will – then we will become increasingly immune to the oft-times alluring but hopelessly mistaken values of our world.
“Having it all” will always be defined as having all of Him. John 15.5 says, “Abide in me and you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Only God can effect change in the universe. He accomplishes the work; but I – with Madeline, Lucy, Jane and Elizabeth beside me – can participate by allowing Him to take and use the meaningless tasks that form the substance of my days to shape me into something beautiful, something that brings everlasting praise to His Name.
