All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (14 page)

17

I AM NOT SURE OF
MY PURPOSE IN LIFE

W
hen I was little, I wanted to be a nurse. I read stories about Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, pioneers in the nursing profession. I liked taking care of people. I was sympathetic. I thought I was born to be a nurse. Unfortunately, I was a little too sympathetic. At the age of fifteen, I had my first day of training as a nurse’s assistant in a nursing home. One of the residents was befuddled and crying. Her tears did me in. I began to cry with her. And I didn’t stop crying until I got home. Not exactly the type of nurse you would long for at your bedside. So nursing was not for me.

Then I thought maybe I would be a missionary. But after several short-term missions trips and a crazy bout with a parasite, I realized that was not my passion either. Perhaps counseling? I majored in psychology in school. But then the thought of counseling people with so many needs depressed me. Not good. Next? A preschool teacher. I love little kids. While this was a better fit, I was still searching. Retail? Decorating? Import/export? Sales? Nothing fit.

I had always thought finding my purpose in life would be like finding the holy grail. I would know what I was looking for, what I was created for, and I would hunt it down like a treasure and accomplish whatever task it was that God had created me for. Some people are so very sure of who they are meant to be. I always longed for that type of drive and assurance. But ringing up furniture in the mall didn’t strike me as being all that purposeful. I was always anxious to find that one thing that would make me special. That one thing that would set me apart and make me unique in God’s eyes. That one thing I could do that no one else could do. But I always came away from my soul-searching confused and unclear. I wanted to be going places, doing things, and instead, I was stuck.

Then I went to a writers’ conference. I had an epiphany. This was it. I was supposed to be a writer. My destiny was to be a published author. So I wrote. And I wrote some more. All the while remaining unpublished. I began to read other writers and realized there are some absolutely fantastic writers out there. Really funny. Really insightful. Really a whole lot better than I was. And again I plunged to the unpurposeful abyss. Maybe I am not special. Maybe I will never find what I am uniquely created to do. Maybe I will stumble through life without purpose, leaving no real impact behind.

This conclusion delighted Hazy Girl. She loves to leave us tired supergirls in a fog of indecision. She loves when we are confused by all the options of what we should do and who we should be. She gets giddy when we wander through life feeling purposeless and mediocre. She says things like, “Wow, there really are a lot of people who do things better than you do. That’s unfortunate.”

Or, “It is really interesting that you thought you might be a singer someday since there are only fifty gajillion other people who can sing better than you. I hear there is an opening at Happy Pretzel at the mall. You better go check it out.”

Or, “It doesn’t really matter what you do or who you are in life. Just getting through is enough. Maybe you should go to college. Or maybe not. Come to think of it, it probably won’t make a whole lot of difference.”

We supergirls easily buy into this rhetoric that we don’t really have a whole lot of purpose or that we won’t ever find that thing that we should be doing. We think our impact on the world is minimal and doubt if anyone will take notice whether we achieve something or not. The thing that Hazy Girl is so intent on keeping from us is that Jesus is not as concerned with what we do as with who we are. If Hazy Girl can keep us focused on searching for that perfect purpose or deceive us into thinking that the perfect gig is the one around the corner, she has won the battle. She doesn’t want us to know that God’s tagline is “I am that I am” not “I do that I do.” Jesus is far more interested in our character than our career track. If Jesus was concerned about IQ ratings, sales potential, originality, winning personality, ability to make an impact on the world, good looks, or business savvy and political acumen, he would have gone an entirely different route when he picked out his disciples.

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of disease and illness. Here are the names of the twelve apostles:

first Simon (also called Peter),
then Andrew (Peter’s brother),
James (son of Zebedee),
John (James’s brother),
Philip,
Bartholomew,
Thomas,
Matthew (the tax collector),
James (the son of Alphaeus),
Thaddeus,
Simon
(the Zealot), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).

Matthew 10:1–4

I’m not really sure how he went about determining who his followers would be, but four of them were fishermen. There goes the diversity angle. He gathered people from the same area instead of conducting a worldwide competition to see who could best speak on his behalf. He picked a tax collector who was not too high in the popularity polls. He chose a political zealot who wouldn’t do a whole lot to win over the masses. Then of course, there was Judas, who would betray him. Not the best choices, from my point of view.

Jesus picked the strangest team. These men would carry his message to the ends of the earth. God’s representatives. There was not a single overqualified person on that team. Not one who had personal goals of world domination or higher education. There was not a priest or a leader of the community. In fact, their skill sets seemed to be quite common. But then maybe Jesus was not looking for marketability or the cream of the crop. Maybe Jesus was more interested in raw material. I think he was looking for people he could bend and mold, people who would watch and learn.

Undoubtedly, they struggled as disciples. Yielding themselves daily to Jesus often left them with questions. His ways were not their ways. And yet these are the founders of our faith. The men who went on to heal, to minister, to spread the gospel to the very ends of the earth. Not bad for a few smalltown boys. All because they followed Jesus. All because they heard his voice and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

Now the important part that we can learn from the disciples is that despite their green-ness, they were smart enough to know they wanted to spend their days following Jesus. They recognized their own limitations and wanted what Jesus had to offer. Maybe it was the excitement and power that drew them to Jesus. Maybe it was his care of others or his authority. But whatever it was, they all said yes when he called them to follow. When he said, “Follow me,” they dropped what they were doing and obeyed.

When Jesus calls us to follow him, we tired supergirls must simply answer yes. At that moment, our true purpose begins to form. It is not so much about following a career path as it is about following the path of Christ. When we say yes to following Jesus, our trajectory changes. We are no longer fumbling around in the dark trying to find out what we will do. We are stepping out in obedience, walking toward the person we will become.

Here we are thinking we are useless and purposeless and indecisive after three majors and two and a half career changes, and Jesus is simply asking us to follow him. We are concerned with the where, the when, and the how, and he is concerned with the who. He is ready to mold us supergirls into something so much more than we are. We can wander about, yearning for purpose, or we can place ourselves into his capable hands. Hands that like to work with raw material. No good potter is going to turn down an opportunity like that.

The potter likes clay in its basest form. He doesn’t abhor it because it can’t figure out how to break out of its lumpishness on its own. He doesn’t look at the clay and think,
For goodness’ sake, why can’t you pull yourself together and
make something of yourself?

The potter looks at the clay and sees possibilities. He begins to manhandle it and shape it. The potter really, really loves clay. The potter can accomplish something with clay in his hands. On our own, we are stuck. We are a big lump of unpurposed clay. In his hands, we are chock full of possibilities. And he promises to keep working with us until he makes us into exactly the person he has designed us to be. All this clarity and usability really bugs Hazy Girl. Once we turn our questions, our passions, our hearts over to Jesus, she has no choice but to hit the road. Then again, so do we. We supergirls have quite a journey ahead with Jesus who calls us to join him, saying, “Follow me.”

And that sounds like we are going places.

18

I AM A
PEOPLE PLEASER

I
t’s not that I enjoy second-guessing myself or think I can’t make good decisions. But I don’t know . . . what do you think? There is this innate need in us supergirls to feel accepted and affirmed. It comes, I think, from that thing deep within us that aches to be loved. It would be fantastic if everyone liked us and was happy with everything we ever did. But that is just not reality. So for those of us supergirls who live to please, life becomes a road fraught with anxiety and disappointment. If people don’t like us, we can’t seem to get happy.

Take, for example, the garbage man. I would like him to think that I take care with the garbage. Or that I’m a good recycler. I try, but sometimes I forget to recycle. I put my plastic, my aluminum, my paper all together. In the trash. And then on Tuesday mornings when the garbage man comes to collect my trash, I cringe inside. Because I know that he knows that I am an unrecycling monster who is polluting the earth and refuses to take a few minutes from her day to walk outside and sort her trash. So if I feel this deeply about what the garbage man thinks, you can see the dilemma that I have when it comes to pleasing the people that I actually come in contact with. Even as I am writing this, I’m wondering if you will like what I write or think it is drivel.

Does the people pleasing never end? Nope. There are so many people we want to like us. We want to please our parents, boyfriends, husbands, children, teachers, neighbors, bosses, sisters-in-law, co-workers, random mall workers, customer service representatives, local coffee shop baristas, pastors, numerous committee members, and the list goes on and on. Why? Because of Miss Do They Like Me?

I’m sure that you know her well. Miss Do They Like Me? is a true blue friend who sticks with you through thick and thin. She encourages you on a daily basis to please everyone with her catchy catchphrase—you guessed it—“Do they like me?”

If you don’t base your decisions on her prodding, she says things like, “Oh, wow, now they really won’t like you,” or “They’re probably mad at you.”

She is very persuasive. But this is the thing. She is betting her whole game on the fact that you won’t realize this small bit of truth . . . there is no pleasing people. That’s what makes us people pleasers so terrified.

They
—whoever
they
are to you—are always changing up the rules. Maybe last week,
they
wanted you to be sweet and demure, but this week it’s all about being assertive. Maybe last time you tried to fit in with that crowd, you had to ignore someone else, but this time if you want to fit in, you have to give up your vacation to do charity work in the inner city. Maybe the last time you tried to figure out what
they
were thinking, they liked it when you read your Bible for two hours a day, but this time
they
are saying you should meditate to worship songs. Maybe last month
they
were saying faded-boy-cut-low-rise-jeans and this month
they
are saying super-flare-low-low-rise-don’t-bend-down-or-there-willbe-a-show-dark-rinse-who-can-even-wear-those-kind-ofjeans? See what I mean? There is just no pleasing
them
!

One thing I really love about Jesus is that he never let anyone manipulate him. He wasn’t concerned about what they thought about him. He didn’t let people squeeze him into the mold they wanted him to fit in. When he was dealing with people, he was so sure of himself that he never cracked under pressure. I, on the other hand, seem to crumble at the smallest bit of opposition. What do I think about global warming or teal mascara? I’ve always wanted the earth to be warm, and I abhor teal. Oh no, wait, what I meant was I abhor global warming and teal is a warm color . . . right? What do you think? I find it hard to stand firm. Maybe it’s because I have no idea what I am talking about, I am rarely sure of myself, and I forget why exactly I am here.