Living Your Purpose…Because Life Happens Before You’re Ready

I fussed at God.  I asked Him for a new purpose.  I put in a request for a transfer and a new position.  He denied both, and sent me right back to the middle of my current purpose.

I was ready to move on.  He was ready for me to stand still, and, for the longest, neither of us were willing to budge.

I caved.  I decided it was time for me to be all in, so I put it all on the line until I had nothing left to give.  My days ran out of time.  My bank account ran out of money, and I ran out of patience.  Right about then, the lights came on and it was time for me to put on a show.

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Last year, at the end of state testing, I decided the kids needed a theme song.  In my head, I sang “we ready…we ready…we ready…for y’all.”  At the time, I had not heard the song in years.  I reserved to play the song for test days in my classroom to get my students in the right frame of mind.  That way, the LEAP (the Louisiana state test) would just be another assessment my students were more than ready to take when the time came.

As I prepped myself to present my first training last summer, my nerves were getting the best of me.  While praying, the same song I vowed to use for my students the next year popped into my head, and I began to sing and dance in the hotel bathroom mirror.  I sang it to myself as I walked into the room of people in Detroit whom I had never met before, and then I put on a show.

At the end of the training, I did not get applause, but God sent me white chocolate Twix, candles, and inspirational note cards as gifts.

It was then, I decided that I would use the song for myself as well.  It would be my theme song, and by the end of that summer, I almost cried as I heard a young boy singing that song I had not heard in years on a commercial from the locker room floor.

God smiled and sweetly stated, “I told you we were ready.”

I took my song, and I ran with it.  I prepped.  I planned, but I never felt ready for show time.  Yet, the lights would always come on.  So I continued to sing my song to myself as I put on the best performances I had to offer always feeling like I had not done enough to get ready…always feeling like I did not really want to perform right now…always feeling like I needed a miracle to get the results I so desperately wanted to see.  I never knew what was going to happen.  I never knew what my boss was going to say, nor how my athletes, students, and children were going to perform.

In the back of my mind, I never had enough time to get it all done.  I did not have enough time to be a good mom, and a good coach, and a good teacher, and a good blogger, and a good wife, and now God had the nerve to ask me to find new friends.  When exactly was I supposed to hang out with them?  I did not have time for the things He refused to take out of my purpose.  How dare He add more?  I would show Him. I would put on my best show with all of its brokenness and He could finally see that I was not the girl for the job and put me somewhere else.  Somewhere where I could breathe for a moment, where the days were not so long and the pace was not so quick.  Somewhere where the lives of children were not so intricately connected to how I was feeling on any given day at any given moment.

The results shocked me.

The track team kept winning. They won more races and ranked higher than they ever have before in the history of the school.

Then 100% of my students passed the state test. How is that for a statistic? 100% of low performing students – over half which failed math and the state test the previous years, including the special education students – passed!!!

As icing on the cake, my son came home (and still comes home) asking me what my favorite part of the day was – a habit I created so long ago, but could never remember to do consistently enough for it to stick.

And my husband begin to send me motivational text messages.  Every.  Single.  Day.  Out of nowhere.

I looked at God.  He smiled and said, “you’re welcome.”

Then I understood the song I had been singing to myself for the past year.

“We ready…we ready…we ready for y’all.”

It had never been about me. It was always about we.

We – God and me. We were always ready even when I was not.

Living my purpose was never about me.

God confirmed my thoughts with “living your purpose was about we.  We can do anything not because you can do anything but because I can do anything.  You have been placed in your position because you are the best one for the job even when you are not enough.  We are enough together.  I only needed your obedience.  Once you were all in, once you said yes, the sky was the limit.  I knew you were broken.  That is why I chose you to live this life.  That is why I chose you to live this purpose.  I chose you because you were broken.  So that people saw past you.  So that people could see us.  So that people could see the we in ‘we ready.'”

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If you feel like life is getting in the way of your purpose,

If you feel like the show is starting before you are ready,

If you feel ready for a change of scenery because you are sick and tired of your current situation,

Remember that living your purpose is not about you.

Living your purpose is about we.

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How do you choose to live out your purpose?

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