If you have been following my blog recently, you may have
noticed that since moving back to the states, I’ve been doing a lot of pining
for purpose in my life. That feeling of there being something missing,
something I was supposed to be doing with my life, but hadn’t yet kept nagging
at me. Then, last month, an opportunity come up to volunteer (with a paid
stipend) to do something I almost couldn’t resist, work with kindergarteners to
achieve the goal of reading by the end of the school year. Oh, my heart ached when it was offered to
me…this is right up my alley, but the timing was not. I couldn’t take this opportunity without
hanging onto my job part time on base too, which might have worked out except
that I would be working a 12 hour day 5 days a week for the next 10
months. Besides for it being an
opportunity I would have enjoyed immensely (and very similar to what I was
doing for a year when I worked with the Kindergarten class as an ELL instructor
on Kwajalein), it might have opened more doors for me to get back into a
teaching career, which I sorely miss.
So, I prayed about it, A LOT! The more I prayed, the more I became
unsettled about taking the position. I knew
I wasn’t in the right place in my life to do something like this. I turned down the offer and instead of going
back to pining for purpose again, I was surprised to discover a new feeling of
peace about it all…peace in my purpose being for my family right now, peace in
knowing that it’s OK for my purpose to be my children and my husband in this
time and place.
I honestly started to feel a little guilty after I realized
how much I had been impatient and striving for purpose outside of the place I
am in my life at this moment. I felt guilty for not thinking about how neglectful
and selfish a choice this would have been, and it reminded me of the time God
whispered to my mom and told her something very similar. I don’t even remember
the situation exactly, but she was praying for guidance (maybe it was about
moving to the beach, which she did later for several years), and she was told
that there would be a time for her later, but that now it was time to take care
of her daughter (me). I’m so glad she listened! You would think with a teenager,
just as my boys are today, that your parenting responsibilities would lessen,
and you could take on extra, but I needed my mom more as a teenager and young
woman and wife than I ever had as a child. I believe my boys need me more now
as well. I want to not just be there for
them, but to really be present in every way.
There are so many things I still want to teach them, so many things I
want to provide guidance in, and now’s the time, before they are grown. Now it
seems so clear where it was so cloudy before.
For the time being, my purpose is to take care of my family. All the other stuff can wait.
I think a lot of my pining for purpose here came out of the
transition from life on Kwajalein to life back in America. It’s been an
enlightening change from island life to stateside living. There, I really was
able to do it all. On an island where everyone has an hour-long lunch at home
daily and where the beach as well as your workplace is a short bike ride away,
you had the ability to do more. The
saying there is that you can work a full day, then head out on an afternoon
dive, and end the day with 9 holes at the golf course. And, it’s true! You can. So, I was able to
work a full day, help my boys with homework after school, attend their sporting
events, run to the post office AND store, head home for a bit, then head to Cub
Scouts and lead a meeting, then home again for dinner, dishes, and a little
quality time with my husband before bed.
Here, I commute an hour a day, going to the grocery store takes an hour
to an hour and a ½, dropping off and picking up my kids from sports practice
takes another 30-45 minutes or more, and then there’s dinner, dishes, and
getting prepared for the next day.
There’s still quality time with family and exercise time with the dog
that usually gets worked in, but if I were to extend my workday on top of the
commute and everything else, that means something would have to go. It’s not worth sacrificing my family for
it.
What I have learned through all this is that living in the
states means living a purposeful life in a different way than what I was used
to before. That said, I have definitely
learned to appreciate what living overseas on a small island means, which is
more time for everything as well as more opportunity to help in simple but very
important ways, such as teaching English to local teachers and students or
providing healthy snacks and books for children to enjoy and take home to
places where they have neither most of the time. Because there are so many basic needs in a
third world country, you can often just ask what you can do to help and be
overwhelmed with your choices. You can
exercise your creativity and come up with and implement your own plan to help
and something about knowing you made a difference from start to finish in
someone else’s life is very fulfilling. In
the states, I believe you can still make those same differences, and the same
needs are there for portions of the population, but you are often searching for
the organization that provides the volunteer opportunities you seek, and you
are simply one of a number of people helping in very specific and limited ways
laid out by the organization. You do not
always get the direct involvement in making the difference and actually seeing
the change too. Instead, you may be only delivering books to offices who serve
low income families who don’t have a lot of access to books OR it may be stepping
into an after school program homework club and helping with homework when
there’s only one teacher and 12 students to assist, but there is still purpose
in it. I see that now.
Funny thing is, after all this pining for purpose and
impatience at not finding it, God gives me a little blessing, just because
that’s how he is. Within a few weeks of coming to this revelation and giving up
my pining, I got a call to teach an ENGL 101 class as an adjunct faculty member
at a technical college I had applied to a few months back, and it happened to
fit right with my current workday schedule! The college itself is only a 10-minute
drive from base, so I pop out for a hour each day to teach, then head back to
work. I feel like I have been rewarded
for choosing wisely because the purpose I was missing is in this new classroom
with my new students! I am so excited to be teaching again. You want to know the best part? Of course you
do! I wouldn’t have been able to take this teaching job if I had taken the
other volunteer opportunity, so once again, God knew what was best and what I
needed. Thankfully, I followed his lead this time, although my impatience
almost led me outside his guidance. Now, I am honored enough to have both, time
to serve my family’s needs as well as fulfill my need for purpose again through
teaching English to students who are in the midst of reinventing their lives
and finding new purpose after hardships or are trying to get a running start on
college and their future.
