I’ve been thinking a lot about less lately and what’s my life purpose. What is life really about? Do I really need to do all of the things? And if not, what matters? Who knows why these questions start to bubble up in life, but if you’re on a growth journey, I believe they will and they do. It’s all a part of the process of shedding what isn’t serving us, what isn’t meant to be the life for us, and relearning what our lives really are meant to look like in each new season.
Each season of life is different. Different people. Different challenges. Different passions. Different energy levels. So naturally, I guess with it each season we may need to loosen what once worked, what we thought matters and ask what works and matters now with who we are and what we’ve learned.
What do I want to life look and feel like? What really matters in this space? What does my life truly want to be?
These questions aren’t necessarily “fun” but neither is dismissing them and going with the flow as if everything is fine only to wake up years later to a life you don’t really want or love or resonate deeply with. And lately I’ve been wondering if all of the achieving I’ve been so great at in my years past is necessary or what my heart desires.
Is this needed? Is this meant for me? Do I like my life?
I’m still in it, but I think the answer, maybe as all answers are, is a vast and unfolding one. What I’ve realized in this season is perhaps God really meant it when he said life was summed up in the sole command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” So if that’s it, then everything else is “window dressing”. Not that it doesn’t matter, all of life is within God so all of this is divine and beautiful.
So if then much of life is optional… then maybe I don’t need to bust my butt? Maybe I don’t need to do “all the things”. Maybe I don’t need to be all things to all people. Maybe I’m not meant to “feel bad” for my one little life and space and what I truly desire but in fact maybe this one little mind, body, heart, capacity and home is more than enough? Maybe being is enough. Maybe I’m allowed to just be. Be me. To love God through my life – trough loving my home, enjoying my cooking, my reading, my cleaning, my sleeping and waking, coming and going life – realizing all of this is the life I have from God. To love others – maybe that would look like all of my achieving big things like blogs and podcasts and anything else you want to fill in the blank here, but maybe too it would look more subtle like loving the people I get to pass by, the ones that enter my home, the small numbers that enter my classes, the coworkers that share a hallway with me. Maybe that’s enough. And to love myself. This is a big one. Maybe I’m not called to walk around in the “I’m not getting it all done (AKA I’m not enough)”, but around in the “no matter what gets done and what is left undone, I am enough.” That to me is the epitome of self-love and apparently that is very important to Jesus in our ability to love others (and probably God who made us as well). Maybe to love myself is to do less. To simply be and love being. For all the creative, silly, calm, restful, and subtle ways and simplicity and being who God made me from the beginning.
I’m pretty sure I walked around this world for many years thinking I had to “be someone”. Achieve big things! Write books. Make podcasts. Be noticed. Get your works seen. Get your art purchased. Get huge clients…” None of those things are bad. And I’m glad our world is so vast we all get to find our part in it. I think the exterior things can even fit into our being ourselves. But what I’m realizing in this season is what’s also true: I am somebody. Already.
You are somebody. You will always be somebody. I will always be somebody.
No matter who you are, what you’ve done, what your past tells about you within your mind – your truth is that you’re enough. You were loved before and you will always be loved later. You can’t earn or achieve or manipulate your lovability to be any greater than it is. And this is a hard truth to grasp – maybe one that will take a lifetime. I’m willing to live that long to see.
So if you’re struggling today to keep up with the Jones’, to have it all figured out, to do or be more than you are today, may you hear this – you don’t have to. A quiet life is as significant as a noticed, famous or widely seen life. It has to be. As a Christian, it has to be. I think of my loved ones, especially my grandmother. You think about her life and it may not have a book deal, a TV show, a podcast, a (whatever your achievement you see as worthy-making), and it was so richly and inexchangeably meaningful to me.
Love God. Love others as yourself. She does that. And that is more than enough.
The gift of this key command from Christ is that it gives us back our value. It says “You are enough. You love here. You love right where you areas you are. That’s “making it in life”.”
I’m still wrapping my head around this one. I still struggle with ideals and the truth that I don’t have to do all the things I want to do or think I have to do and that somehow I’m enough already today as flawed and in process as I am. And yet I still hold on to the hope that it is the ultimate truth.
So will I produce less in life? I don’t think so. Maybe to your eyes. Not to mine. I will produce the same amount, but right here. More love. More home-cooked meals. More slow mornings and evenings. More quiet moments where I get to read great books and reflect. More walks and hands held. More trips to the favorite handmade ice cream shop. More days with a cleaner home. More weeks where I have whitespace to walk around the house and do what my heart leads me to. More days free from hustle. More moments face to face in conversation. More pauses at the store with clerks to see their humanity as they see mine. More weeds pulled and flowers pruned and vegetables harvested. More family dinners and cozy moments on the couch with loved ones.
This is it. This is life. Nothing needs achieved. Hearts are here to be loved, and that includes your own.
So will I still do all my things? Teach classes? Podcast? Design great things? Write? Yes probably, but at the pace that life allows me to and with sincere love. Less hurried, fully present and fully loving the work I do because my heart actually desires it. That’s how I want to live my life. Quiet. Deep. Present. Connected. Free. Known. Filled with love.
I’m still on this journey. And like I mentioned, it never stops. So it’s very likely you’ll someday read a similar post by me with new learnings in times to come. But today, today I choose to be brave by saying “this is enough” whatever this is for me today. Today I choose to do less and be more. Today I choose to bravely live with less hurry, less need of getting all the things done, more grounding in Love.
If you figure out how to do that well for you, keep letting the world and myself know how. Until then, I’ll keep learning by trial, error and God’s abundant grace.
Grace & peace friends.
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