Finding Your Purpose.

I am a person who thinks a lot; about life and my place in it. What is my purpose as a daughter, as a friend, as a sister, as a human being? This question often occupies the minds of young adults, but I have found another question to take precedence: Do I really have a purpose? 

Over the past twenty years of my life, I have thought about both of these questions but found myself perseverating more on the latter over the past eight. Because for eight years, my life has looked nothing like those around me. Because for eight years, my body and mind have not been one but fight against each other. Because for eight years, I have been faced with the reality that not only has my life looked nothing like those around me, but it might never be normal. So how, if for eight years I have been enduring such unimaginable pain, am I supposed to find my purpose as a daughter, friend, sister, and human being if I don’t even know if I have one at all?

In late February, I left college and returned to North Carolina, where I underwent emergency surgery, and a massive infection was discovered in my abdomen and chest. The symptoms that I disregarded and blamed on dining hall food turned out to be something that could have very well taken my life if found just a few weeks later. I woke up from surgery with the catheters that once sat in my abdomen now coming out of my chest and dripping into external bags. I woke up from surgery expecting to be ready to get on a plane and go back to Waco, but instead, I woke up from surgery and was told that a massive infection was not only in my chest and abdomen but also in my brain and that I would need another surgery less than twenty-four hours later, spend months in the ICU, and fight like hell to stay alive.

For the first time in my life, I thought I was going to die, and while that thought wrecked me, it was met with an unexplainable peace: peace in the inevitable, peace in the idea of being done, peace that maybe the end was near. Death isn’t something I ever thought would happen to me, at least not anytime soon, until that moment. 

It turned out that the infection had not spread to my brain but instead only reached my chest. Instead of spending months in the ICU, I spent two weeks on the neurosurgery floor while I waited for the lab to identify the infection. Upon identifying the infection, I would have a second surgery, my third brain surgery, to replace both shunts and reroute them to my heart. For the next month, I was on IV antibiotics that went through a PICC line in my arm.

As I sat in the hospital for those two weeks, I felt lost, lost as to the why. Why was this happening to me? Why couldn’t I just be an average college student? Why did I only have one visitor? Why? 

These questions didn’t come from a two-week hospital stay but from a cumulation of years fighting for a life worth living. 

Looking at this question that dominated my thoughts for so long, I feel like I might finally have an answer. My answer isn’t “because everything happens for a reason” or “this was simply God’s plan for my life,” and while I believe both of these responses to be true, my answer is different. 

In sixth grade, I begged God for a greater purpose. I felt insignificant and wanted to be used to rattle the Kingdom in a groundbreaking way. I wanted God to use every ounce of me to testify to His faithfulness, grace, and redemption. While I imagined He would elegantly answer that prayer, I believe this is the answer. 

My life has looked nothing like those around me. My life is different, it’s hard, and in many ways, it’s terrifying. However, I believe that every person God used in the Bible lived a life set apart and terrifying, and my life is no different. Because although I find myself pleading to God for healing, restoration, and a story of redemption, I also find myself praising Him for the struggle because it is through the struggle that people find themselves on their knees. It is through the struggle that lives are transformed. It is through the struggle that God moves. 

So, yes, I have a purpose amid both pain and suffering and joy and laughter. In all circumstances, my purpose still stands, my future is still bold, and sharing the testimony of Jesus will forever and always be my reason for living.