What are you feeling, O’ Newly Widowed woman?
What are you feeling, O’ Newly Widowed woman? Do you even fully comprehend what has happened? Is it a reality for you yet? For me, it...
When I envision the life I want to live – when I think about meaning and purpose and this-is-why-I-wake-up-in-the morning, I envision a life of simplicity, minimalism, and joy. I see a trust in my God that cannot be broken. It is a life of wellness, of wholeness, of fullness. And it is truly my heart’s desire to see this for other people. I want to help people; help them see their sacredness-spirit, soul, and body.
But there is something that hangs over this vision like a thick blanket. It is a dark feeling, suffocating and settling down deep in the pit of my stomach. I feel a physical presence of it that almost makes me ill. It is the feeling of hopelessness. And it has plagued me ever since my grandmother got sick and passed away. Such overwhelming meaninglessness.
What is the point to anything if we are just going to die?
Most of us agree that accumulating physical and material wealth is foolishness in the grand scheme of things, but I struggle even to find meaning in the soulish things in life.
Collect moments!
Live life to the fullest!
They yell at me.
But why? Why am I here?
And I fear this isn’t about not knowing my purpose; rather, I do not know why I have a purpose. It is a strange predicament: I cannot find the purpose behind the purpose.
If we are just going to die, if the point is just to make it to God’s celestial shores, and if the earth is nothing but a fallen sphere that is going to be destroyed anyway, then what are we doing here and why does any of this matter?
If our earthly existences are just a blink that hold no weight, why would God bother putting us here? To think that God puts us on earth just so we can wait miserably to get to heaven – it is unbearable. This idea that there is no point to our earthly experiences, that Jesus is going to come back and the earth is going to implode and we’re all going to die – why pursue wellness? Why pursue wholeness? Why seek to make a difference in the world?
I cannot, I cannot, I cannot bring myself to live my life working toward an end – yes, even if the end is heaven. And to have children underneath this weighted curse – I’d rather have no children at all. To conceive them and raise them with the mentality that you just live so you can die – no. I cannot.
The only way I experience any solace in this at all is to believe that heaven is not my final resting place – it is my starting point! I do not live this life working toward the afterlife, BUT from it. I am not born into the world; I am born out of an existence was spiritual long before it was physical.
God existed before time began. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is the essence of our existence, whether we acknowledge it or not. Everything I do in this life is an expression of raw Divinity. The magnificence and grandeur of the Godhead is buried in our earthly existences. Heaven is here, it’s now, it’s in us and it is moving and living and breathing.
We are not waiting to go home. Our spirits ARE home, and every moment of our lives is a fruition of a God who dwells among his people. I am not in a progressive movement toward spirituality; rather, I am unraveling rhythmically from a point and center long ago set into motion. The earth itself and the lives we hold within it is a symphony and God himself played the very fist not before mankind took a breath.
I live FROM and not For!
My life is not about accumulation, but about expression.
Everything I have is because it has been given to me. I cultivate a life of wellness because I AM well. Already, all the time. I am home and I express it as I live. Everything I could hope to obtain, I already possess, and I live from supply. I live from the limitless supply that is the Trinity.
And my experience on earth is not meaningless. I am here on earth to experience God in fullness – to touch, to see, to hear, to smell, to taste. My body is uniquely equipped to experience my Father. My soul, my experiences. I get to know him. I live from him as my point and center, as my essence. I revolve around him. I am not living just to die. I am not spending my days waiting to get to heaven. I can know my God here, and my life is a reflection of all he has made to be true. The fullness of Deity is in me and around me.
I will never experience a moment that is detached form the essence of the Divine.
“In him we live and move and have our being,” as Paul so eloquently said in Acts 17:28.
“Abide,” “abundant life,” “The Kingdom of God is at hand” – all words of Jesus pointing us to a revolution –
We are not clambering toward God; we are adventuring from him.
Our entire life existence is folded inside his holy myriad of flawless design. When we accept the gift, we become rooted in the Eternal, grated into a Divine story that is ageless. And we find home in him. The stories we create on this earth are part of God’s story, an outpouring of all that he is to us and in us. We find ourselves in him. He is our origin and he is our end – he is our infinity.
And I do not believe he wishes us to mark our time on earth as something trivial and empty, guided by a belief that it’s all about getting to the sweet by and by someday. He wishes – I believe – for us to invest in our earthly experiences and God forbid maybe even enjoy them. Because he is here, active, in us and we are in him, always. And I believe he loves this earth – he has grafted himself into the nature that surrounds us. Sometimes when I need to know God is here, I look at the trees.
So, I live fully, in wholeness and wellness, not so that may life may be a forward progress toward an afterlife, but so that it may be a reflection of LIFE, that has happened, and will happen, and is happening, all the time, every single time I take a breath.
by Lauren Anderson