Meaningful Life. Isn’t this what everyone wants; to have a purpose beyond the trivialities and challenges of every day life?

My pastor told us we have to ask ourselves three things for our lives to have meaning:

1. Where did I come from?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going?

These three questions make sense to me. When I think about who I am, it always involves where I came from. Theologically, this would mean that I came from God. Which is something I believe, but it’s also about my origins in this world. I came from my parents, and all that they have contributed to who I am. I came from a geographic area, and all the influences that are attached to that place. My friends, my family, and my experiences have all made me who I am, and are a significant part of who I am today. Without this background information, my life is shallow and doesn’t fully have meaning. I think about the undeveloped character in a story, and how the reader cannot relate to a character unless they have been introduced to some of the character’s backstory, and usually the more robust this knowledge, the better the reader can follow the character’s thinking.

This backstory is constantly being updated and added to. I am here because of the choices that I made; each layer adding a new path to the one that led me here. This is why I am here, but I’m also here because God has deemed that I be here. I was born with a purpose. Yes, I’m still wondering what that purpose is, but maybe it, too, isn’t just one purpose. Maybe like the backstory has brought me here, there were multiple purposes in each of those decisions and paths that have led me this purpose, which will lead me to my next purpose.

And that is the million-dollar question that constantly permeates the sponge-matter in my brain. Where am I going? What’s next? I live far too much in the future. I know this about me, and I am trying to be more present in each moment; even in the mundane things, like washing dishing and doing laundry. I am trying to pay attention to the feel and smell of the soap as I sop the glasses, and feeling the texture of the materials of the clothes as I fold them. This for me is living in the moment.

Life on earth here is about the moments, the decisions, the times of the past and times of the future, but these pale in comparison to where we came from, why we’re here, and where we are going in the times stretched before our birth and death dates. We have come from a loving God, to show God that we love him and want to be back with him. If we do that, we will be going back to from whence we came. This temporal life is confusing, stressful, challenging, scary, bittersweet, and wonderful, but choosing to go home is what the final road is and I believe the purpose for living.  Thank you God for your love.